NEW YORK — Lee Apparel is getting more than it bargained for with its Winter Olympics advertising.
Mike Robertson, director of marketing communications for the company, said Lee had worked out its ad schedule for the Olympics long ago — “many months in advance of this whole Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding thing.”
“We wanted to purchase those venues that are very highly watched by female viewers, such as the figure skating, ice hockey, speed skating and so forth,” Robertson said.
Now, in the wake of the media attention given to the Kerrigan-Harding story, Robertson said, “The word is that on Friday night, during the women’s figure skating final program, they are expecting to do better share than the Super Bowl has ever done.”
Lee will have three spots during that event.
Overall, in fact, the Olympics have been a good call for Lee. CBS had promised advertisers Nielsen ratings of at least 18.6, and, said Robertson, the actual ratings have been in the low 20s every night.
Advertising during the Olympics is part of Lee’s decision, two years ago, to reposition itself from a discount distribution jeans line to more of a mass department store line.
Working with its Minneapolis-based advertising agency, Fallon, McElligott, Lee devised a strategy of “big event” marketing to support the move.
“It’s hard to make the transition from lower-tier distribution to upper,” said Harish Bhandari, Fallon’s account supervisor for Lee. “So the advertising and marketing had a job to do as far as making Lee brand as big and powerful as possible.”
The first big event Lee advertised on was the Barcelona Summer Olympics in 1992. This year, following the success of that venture, Lee became a major Olympics sponsor and won the right to be the only denim and casual pants advertiser of the Lillehammer games with a budget of more than $8 million, according to Robertson.
That translates to over 60 commercials and 16 “billboards,” which are the transitions from the program to the commercial, during the Games’ two-week run.
While Lee’s ad budget for 1994 won’t be much greater than the $20 million it spent last year, Robertson said the strategy is different due to both the Olympic commitment and a new print campaign that will break in the spring.
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“We’re spending more at different times of the year,” he said. “We have a preliminary budget, and if sales continue to go up, we will get more ad dollars, because our budget is a proportion of sales.”
“For the Olympics, we tried to pick events that skew 50 percent male, 50 female,” said Bhandari. “Other areas, like the Academy Awards, are 70 percent female. But we want to get that female viewer, because that’s where our franchise is. She is the primary purchaser of denim for the family.”
For Lee’s women’s line, Fallon developed a parody of the gyrations women in an aerobics class go through when trying on a pair of jeans. At the end of the 30-second spot, a voiceover says, “Considering what you go through to put on most women’s jeans, who needs an exercise program? Try Lee — the brand that fits.”
Lee’s other spot for its women’s line involves the misadventures of a traveler trying to steam-press her non-Lee khakis in a hotel shower.
Robertson said that Lee used focus groups to develop its campaign. He found out that the average woman tries on about 17 pairs of jeans before finding a pair she likes.
“The female consumer is always in the market for a pair of jeans,” he said. “Unlike the male consumer, who might venture in to buy a new pair if his old pair is busted, the female is always looking for jeans.”
But as Bhandari noted, the big event strategy, “while very effective, is also very expensive. While you get a large audience for a short amount of time, you have to be out there continuously in big events and elsewhere.”
In other TV plans, the company will be a sponsor of the Academy Awards on March 21 for the second year in a row. It will also be involved with other sports events that are more targeted to a male audience, such as college football. Come fall, Lee will buy some time on a new network TV series — which one is still to be decided — and also plans to be on a “major miniseries,” Robertson said.
Robertson also noted that Lee will break a new print campaign to support its shorts business in April issues of fashion, general interest, and fitness magazines that will hit the newsstands at the end of March. There will also be a “completely new” ad campaign for the back-to-school period. Lee will start shooting it in about five weeks, he noted.
All this big event advertising doesn’t mean Lee is neglecting its grass-roots marketing. Bhandari said a new point-of-sale program will break during back-to-school that will tie in with Lee’s positioning as “the brand that fits.”
And, Bhandari said, Lee will continue using humor, with some new spots being launched during the Oscars.
“It’s a way of making an emotional connection with people,” he said. “We don’t necessarily call it a humor campaign. We call it a problem-solution campaign. The problem is that jeans don’t fit, and Lee has the solution.”