Procter & Gamble marketers such as Billy Cyr and Casey Keller have, perhaps, one of the toughest marketing assignments the company has ever dished out:
The selling of olestra.
Mr. Cyr, Olean's marketing manager, and Mr. Keller, Pringles marketing manager, are working on campaigns to sell olestra as a strong tool for fighting obesity. And, at the same time, they have to mute concerns about digestive after-effects that have been associated with the fat substitute.
Negative publicity about olestra's possible side effects has provided plenty of comic fodder, even a Late Night Top 10 list on rejected olestra slogans.
Procter executives are secretive about the cost and scope of the marketing campaign, except to acknowledge it rivals the $100 million effort used to introduce the pain reliever Aleve four years ago.
The campaign begins in less than two weeks with 60-second commercials that stress the ingredient's natural heritage (derived from soybean oil and cottonseed oil). A soybean farmer, his wife and a grain elevator operator act as narrators in three of the spots.
The commercials don't mention P&G by name, but end with the tag line: ''From the makers of Crisco. New fat-free Olean. A good place to start.''
A similar print campaign is breaking in major magazines Feb. 23.
Simultaneously, the company is supplying background information about how Olean works to some 300,000 doctors and an unspecified number of in-store pharmacists.
''We've got 200 employees working feverishly full-time on making the execution as perfect as possible,'' said Linda Sandefur, the P&G vice president who manages the Olean business.
Mr. Cyr, the Olean marketing manager, acknowledged ''it's clearly a risk'' that people seeing Olean ads will be upset that the fat-free chips aren't available at their local stores yet. But the company thought it best to educate the public about Olean first.
''There is a lot of misperception out there,'' he said. ''We intend to be an open book for the consumer that wants to get into the science.''
Already, the Olean.com Web site has been updated with abstracts of all clinical studies done on olestra.
As fat-free Pringles is gradually rolled out, the Pringles brand team will follow up with ads that it has successfully used in test markets. They stress that you don't have to give up great taste to get zero fat.
Pringles, a $1 billion product on its own, is P&G's fastest-growing global brand, having recently added Russia to its 40-country territory.
Now in its 30th year, Pringles languished for years until being rejuvenated in the late 1980s, in part due to a new marketing campaign geared tothe young that positions the chip as fun and hip.
The rollout of Fat-free Pringles will be the biggest marketing campaign in the brand's history. In addition to the TV ads, Pringles will be passed out at major events and in grocery stores as well as being distributed to homes.
The anticipated price when it arrives in Cincinnati next month: about $1.99 for a 6.5-ounce can compared with $1.39 to $1.49 for regular Pringles.
MAIN STORY
Infographic: The making of olestra
Plant built on time
Olestra chronology
