Shine On

New York City-based Vanity Fair Intimates this month kicks off the first product launch for Vassarette since the company bought the lingerie brand in 1990. A new Technoshine line uses new fabrics and cleavage-enhancing design, but speaks to Vassarette’s core customers: women of all ages who like to dress sexy.

Technoshine is busting (sorry) onto the scene with a Your Time to Shine modeling contest and editorial tie-ins with Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and Glamour. In-store signage, hang tags, and print ads invite shoppers to join the model search by sending proofs of purchase and a photo.

Thirty finalists will attend a banquet to announce two winners, one average-size and one full-figure, who get $20,000 one-year modeling contracts with Vanity Fair. They’ll appear on Technoshine hang tags and at trade shows and fashion shows for retailers. Ten first-place winners get $200 in product; five second-place winners get $100 in goods. Carlson Draddy & Associates, Westport, CT, handles.

Editorial mentions and magazine-delivered promos are key to Vassarette’s marketing plan, says director of marketing Terri Polk. “We have a very tight partnership with Cosmo,” which features Technoshine in its “Cool Hunt” scavenger hunt (find items in the magazine to win prizes). Vogue’s Night on the Town sweeps includes Vassarette customers; Glamour offers a “sexy massager” with Vassarette purchase.

Last summer, the brand tied in with Cosmo’s “All About Men” issue for the Vassarette Access Tour. Male models in Humvees ascended on concerts, beaches, and sporting events to rouse young women’s interest in – well, underwear. Consumers who filled out a survey (for Vanity Fair’s database) got a spin at a prize wheel to win Cosmo doodads and tickets to local events. A free CD with each $15 purchase drove tour oglers to stores. Carlson Draddy handled that campaign, too.

Vanity Fair is pushing hard for brand recognition, even though sales are strong. Mid-scale Vassarette sells so well at mass merchandise chains that many consumers think it’s a private label. Vassarette holds a 19 percent share of the bra segment, which sold 468 million units last year (136 million through mass stores).

A Wal-Mart-only promo puts bra-fitting clinics in the retailer’s stores. Staffers give out brochures that explain how women should measure themselves for proper fit. “We can’t touch consumers in Wal-Mart, but we can give them information,” Polk explains. Mass Connections, La Mirada, CA, Wal-Mart’s approved vendor for in-store events, executes.

There are no pit stops for General Mills’s promotion department these days. Last month, the Minneapolis-based company launched an Internet effort for Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn as part of a national campaign featuring NASCAR legend Richard Petty. The Guess Richard Petty’s Favorite Paint Scheme sweeps is running on popsecret.com through Sept. 29. To enter, contestants guess which one of three Pop Secret paint schemes Petty will choose for his No. 43 NASCAR Winston Cup car. (John Andretti will drive the car in the Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400 at the North Carolina Speedway on Oct. 22.) Winners receive four-night, five-day trips for two to the race, plus thousands in cash. The Web site features an interactive “Pit Stop” with games and information. The sweeps is supported nationally through P-O-P displays, a July 30 FSI in major-market newspapers, and on eight million popcorn packages. Promotions.com, New York City, handles.

Continuing its aggressive 2000 marketing push, Eastman Kodak Corp. is in the midst of its largest consumer promotion ever. The Rochester, NY-based company is running Picture Perfect Summer, its first marketing initiative tied to both merchandise and services.

The campaign features a collect-and-win game in which slices of different pictures are hidden in merchandise packaging. (Collect all four pieces to the picture of the Chevy Tahoe and it’s yours.) Top prize is a $250,000 vacation house. Other prizes include Chevy trucks, Compaq computers, Coleman campers, Trek bikes, and trips to the San Diego Zoo and Universal Studios.

Kodak is trying to stimulate merchandise and service purchases by spiking each gamepiece with a coupon carrying such offers as free and discounted one-time-use cameras and film processing. The effort boasts $80 million in prizes and discounts, and runs through Sept. 10.

Kodak is looking to the program to increase trial and cross-purchases at a time when consumers traditionally spend the most on photo-related products and services – summer. Mastermind Marketing, Atlanta, handles.

Argentine wine maker Bodegas Etchart recently broke a six-month initiative that offers to teach hundreds of consumers the tango, the national dance of the company’s home. Consumers enter the It Takes Two to Tango effort by filling out entries on neckhangers at retail. Winners receive free lessons from dance chains Fred Astaire Studios in New York City, Tango . . . nada mas in Chicago, or Salon de Tango in Seattle. “We wanted to promote the wine using Argentina as the selling point,” says Roberta Perillo, senior brand manager at Austin, Nichols & Co., the New York City-based importer of Bodegas Etchart.

The promotion tickles the taste buds as well as the toes. Bodegas Etchart and Fred Astaire Dance Studios will host wine-tasting events around the U.S. through the end of the year. Astaire students will be invited to sample Etchart wines and compete in a national tango competition serving up a trip to Argentina and the Bodegas Etchart vineyards as grand prize. Product sampling will run through December.

A pair of QSRs had a bit of a beef over some chicken last month. Chik-fil-A, Atlanta, threatened legal action against Miami-based Burger King when the Home of the Whopper’s summer promo hit a little too close to the spot where Chik-fil-A normally roosts marketing-wise. Chik-fil-A is running an Itz Not Right Wing or Left effort encouraging customers to eat chickens, and thereby save cows. The promotion, which launched earlier this summer and is Chick-fil-A’s most aggressive initiative this year, features peel-off gamecards attached to drink cups.

Around the same time, Burger King broke a tie-in campaign to DreamWorks’ Chicken Run that exhorted customers to eat Whoppers and “Save the Chickens.” To end the clucking, Burger King agreed to limit in-store P-O-P but keep using Run premiums.

Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati, is prepping a fall effort for Pampers diapers that will give away three million CDs of lullabies, kids’ songs, and Christmas songs. It’s the brand’s second CD offer. Immediate Entertainment Group, London, produces the CDs.

St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch later this month will name four winners in a Budweiser Race for the Gold campaign that marries the company’s NASCAR and Olympic sponsorships. If Bud drivers Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Kenny Bernstein win their respective races on Aug. 26 and Sept. 4, Anheuser-Busch will divvy up $5 million in prizes between one random consumer and the U.S. Olympic Committee ($2.25 million each) and the two drivers ($250,000 each). If Earnhardt doesn’t win but Bernstein does, Budweiser will give the USOC $100,000. If Earnhardt wins the first race, A-B will fly him and the winning entry to cheer for Bernstein in the second race.

The program is supported by a commemorative 16-ounce can depicting the drivers’ USOC-logoed cars that will be on shelves Aug. 1 through Sept. 15. Fans can also buy die-cast car replicas and other souvenirs, with proceeds supporting USOC.

Huntsville, AL-based QSR Wendy’s Corp. is letting aspiring songwriters put their skills to the test. The Search for Sizzlin’ Sounds contest asks consumers to profess their love for burgers by penning original songs. Two finalists will appear on CBS’s Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, and the grand-prize winner scores a personal recording session. Musical equipment packages valued at $3,000 each will be given to five runner-ups. The effort runs through August 31.