Saucing advertising from home puts beans into Wattie's sales

By IRENE CHAPPLE

A year ago, Wattie's beefed up its New Zealand marketing team and started advertising old favourites such as tomato sauce, baked beans and spaghetti.

It was a change from the transtasman marketing tactics that had been in place since Heinz Australia, whose parent is the listed American company HJ Heinz, bought Watties in 1992.

Despite the company being bought by Heinz, it continued with the 60-year-old Watties brand in New Zealand.

However, the New Zealand-based marketing team was 80 per cent of its present size and the grocery icon produced one-size-fits-all advertising for its transtasman consumers.

Since the return of a solid marketing force to New Zealand two years ago, Wattie's sales have risen.

A study by ACNielsen, released this week, shows Wattie's has retained its place as number one supermarket brand, with $177 million in sales.

That figure is up $7 million from the previous year, which was in turn up $13 million from 2001. They exclude sales of Heinz branded products.

In total last year, about $9.7 billion was spent in New Zealand supermarkets.

It is Wattie's steady increase in sales that pleases marketing manager Mike Pretty.

Says Pretty: "It is a vindication of the decision to bring the marketing function back to New Zealand from Australia."

He points to the strong New Zealand flavour of some advertising, including the tomato sauce tagline "The taste Kiwis love", and the new spaghetti campaign - the product's first in five years - which uses the slogan "it's gotta be ... [spaghetti]".

That argument could translate to the multitude of companies running their transtasman advertising from Australia, and is one also pushed by local agencies. New Zealanders, after all, like to see themselves and their accents reflected in advertising.