Marketing powerhouse Procter & Gamble is looking to shake up the coffee category with a major marketing push behind Folgers.

p&g spokesperson Rob Fichtner would not release details of the campaign launch other than to say the advertising will come from N.W. Ayer & Partners, New York.

Folgers, the only coffee brand in the p&g brand stable, is available in instant and ground and has had limited distribution in Canada since late 1992.

According to Fichtner, Folgers has never received an official consumer launch.

Last month, p&g began shipping the full brand lineup to stores.

As well, it has begun priming retailers for the advertising and promotion to come.

Folgers has regular and decaffeinated types of instant and brick ground coffee.

Tins of loose ground coffee come in regular, decaf and mountain roast, and coffee bag singles are available only in regular.

Folgers was introduced in San Francisco in 1859. p&g bought the company in 1963.

Fichtner says the brand has achieved leadership share in the u.s. based on the strength of its ‘Waking Up’ advertising campaign.

‘Folgers is a very aroma-focused brand, a lot of its strength and heritage has been based on its superior aroma,’ he says.

According to Nielsen Marketing Research, total annual Canadian coffee sales in national grocery outlets amount to more than $472 million.

Kraft General Foods is the leader overall because of its wide range of product sold under the brand names Sanka, Maxwell House, Chase & Sanborn, General Foods International Coffees and Nabob.

Nestle Canada, which offers only instant coffees, is strong in that category, which accounts for about $184 million of the market.

Graham Lute, senior vice-president director of communications for Nestle Canada, notes the market is affected whenever a significant new player enters.

But Lute says Nestle does not plan to change its market strategy.

‘We support our products very substantially anyway,’ he says. ‘We won’t be doing anything specifically to target a competitor coming into the market.

‘It’s a competitive market right now, not just within coffee brands, but competing for all beverages.’

Nestle’s brands include specialty coffees Cappuccino, Cafe Au Lait, Mocha, and Espresso; Taster’s Choice, Colombian, and Rich Blend.

For more than a year it has focused much of its efforts on its new specialty coffees, backed by an award-winning ad campaign from McCann, Toronto, now MacLaren McCann.

But Nestle has begun repositioning some of its established brands, including Taster’s Choice, known for its ‘Taster’s Choice Couple’ serialized advertising that originated in Great Britain.

Lute says the ‘Taster’s Choice Couple’ has been sacked, but did not say what will be next for this brand or when new advertising will be launched.

Early this month, Nestle introduced tv advertising, again from McCann, for Rich Blend.

The creative reorients the brand from the first-coffee-of-the day positioning, ‘Make your morning Nescafe,’ to one of a coffee-for-a-moment-of-renewal-any-time-of-the-day tagline, ‘There is no richer cup of coffee.’ PS