Borden Breaks First Snack Attack: Doner Delivers Ads for Client's Initial Snack Food Line While It Defends Vlasic By David Kiley and Betsy Spethman

DETROIT - W.B. Doner this week breaks its first work for Borden b

In what is Borden’s first national line of snack foods to carry the Borden brand – made up of potato, tortilla and corn chips, pretzels, popcorn, corn puffs, snack mix and onion rings – the company is backing the line with a TV spot by Doner that breaks this week. Borrowing from awareness of Borden’s dairy line, the ad features a shot of a barn, then segues into a ‘party barn,’ an attempt to attract young consumers. The line, testing in Michigan and likely to roll out nationally after this year, is backed by a budget equivalent to $18 million to $20 million nationally. The company spent only $19.8 million in measured media for all its products last year, with only $43,000 reported for its snack foods, according to LNA.
Borden also is backing its existing regional snack brands with $10 million in radio, breaking this month in 56 markets.
Separately, the Vlasic Foods division of Campbell Soup is conducting a review including incumbent W.B. Doner, and two other Campbell shops: BBDO and FCB/Leber Katz Partners, both of N.Y. Though the division has not billed more than $6 million in the last few years, the stakes are higher since the food company has been on an agency consolidation and cost-cutting kick.
Doner has had Vlasic for 29 years, since before Campbell acquired the company. Doner’s Southfield, Mich., office had the business, but when Campbell moved the division from Farmington Hills, Mich., to Camden, N.J., last year, Doner moved most of the account services to its Baltimore office, but Southfield and Baltimore are jointly working to defend it.
Copyright Adweek L.P. (1993)