Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 23, 1991                   TAG: 9103230174
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

THERE'S MORE BREWING HERE THAN JUST COFFEE

In their first encounter, she ran clean out of java during a dinner party but found that the new guy next door had just what she needed. In the second ad, he was entertaining another woman at dinner when his neighbor stopped by to return the jar.

"Look, I'm busy right now but . . . perhaps?" he asks at the doorway. "Perhaps," she replies as she turns to leave.

Nestle Beverage Co. has made a soap opera out of the commercials but hopes the sales message won't get lost in the romantic suspense.

Ad experts say Taster's Choice is taking an expensive gamble with the approach, which one executive familiar with the plans said may involve a half-dozen more ads and spending of about $25 million this year.

"Twenty years ago, you may have done a series and people would remember the first one," said David Vadehra, whose company, Video Storyboard Tests Inc., asks thousands of consumers what ads they like every year.

But he said now "there are so many commercials that that is very difficult to do." He speculated that by the time the third Taster's Choice ad airs next fall, most people will have forgotten the first two ads.

Taster's Choice picked the soap opera approach largely because its ad agency, McCann-Erickson Worldwide, used it successfully for another Nestle coffee in Britain for four years.

"As long as television serials and theater were transferable, why not commercials?" said Irwin Warren, the agency's creative director in New York.

The first two ads in the U.S. series are virtually the same as in Britain, and used the same actors, Sharon Maughan and Anthony Head. But Warren said the similarity between the British campaign, which recently climaxed in what he calls "a chaste kiss," will end in the third ad, which will be produced later this spring.

Warren and Taster's Choice Product Manager Cathy Ives won't be specific about what they have in mind. But Warren said he thinks "the chase has to be on forever. The moment they get together, it's over."

Taster's Choice is already the leader in instant coffee, with about 24 percent of the $900 million domestic market, Ives said.

Warren conceded the second Taster's Choice ads works better after seeing the first but he said both ads are effective on their own.

Ives' mail indicates people are already interested.

"Romance is not dead," a woman from Ocala, Fla., wrote. A Myrtle Beach, S.C., woman urged the admakers to keep the courtship "proper and refined."