Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 15, 1994 TAG: 9412150034
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Magazine ads for Absolut vodka have sung from the mailbox. They have spoken holiday greetings in several languages. And they have delivered gifts of greeting cards, stockings and pocket squares.
Marketers of the Swedish liquor brand have been coming up with unusual Christmas season ads every year since 1987.
This year, they are giving away knit gloves.
Calling it ``Absolut Warmth,'' the importer House of Seagram packed gloves designed by Donna Karan and stamped with the Absolut brand into an ad appearing in all 450,000 of New York magazine's Dec. 5 issue.
Chivas Regal, also marketed by Seagram, sponsored a more technically elaborate ad that included 23 tiny red lights arranged in the shape of a bottle of the Scotch whisky. Push a battery concealed in the ad, and the lights brighten the sky in a drawing of a snowbound village.
``Not everyone is looking for reindeer,'' reads the ad, which appeared in 300,000 of the 816,000 copies of the Dec. 12 issue of The New Yorker.
Each campaign cost more than $1 million for production and space - at least $2.22 for each Absolut ad and $3.33 per Chivas Regal ad.
The splashy ads are one way that liquor marketers can help their brands rise above the clamor for attention during the holidays, the biggest sales period of the year for spirits peddlers.
Magazines also provide a creative outlet for liquor marketers, who are unable to pitch their products on television.
Critics complain that some advertisers don't want to be in magazines with such ads.
``It makes it less attractive to others,'' said Roberta Garfinkle, who buys magazine space for the agency McCann-Erickson in New York. ``The feeling is that with so much interest in that one ad, it will eclipse everything else in the issue.''
Publishers say such ads draw more readers and increase the chances that other ads will be seen as well.
``I've never heard a negative word,'' said Alan Katz, associate publisher of New York magazine.
Arthur Shapiro, the top marketing executive for Seagram, said he doesn't know if the elaborate Christmas ads actually boost sales.
``We do it because it's a way for a consumer to think of our brands. It is something alive, which is unusual for the print medium. And we have a lot of fun with it,'' he said.
The Magazine Publishers of America said the practice of including something extra with magazine ads is increasing.
Nontraditional ads like those that include fragrance strips, moving parts, blinking lights or other devices rose 16 percent in the first 11 months of this year in 185 consumer magazines tracked by the Publishers Information Bureau.
by CNB