Ocean Spray Christmas special draws 1.5m viewers

(The above animated image was provided by Arnold.)

"Cranberry Christmas," an animated TV special produced by Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., was watched by 1.5 million viewers earlier this month, Ocean Spray's ad agency, Arnold of Boston, said.

Meanwhile, a song from the special, "Christmas Is Just Around the Corner," cowritten and performed by superstar crooner Barry Manilow (pictured below at left) is moving up the pop charts, noted Ocean Spray, a cooperative of cranberry and grapefruit growers based in Lakeville and Middleborough.

As Ocean Spray vice president of marketing Larry Martin sees it, the TV special is part of a four-year effort to "reintroduce the cranberry to America," and he hopes that "Cranberry Christmas" has the legs to be a holiday perennial such as "Frosty the Snowman" or a "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

The animated TV special is a good, if subtle, way to extend Ocean Spray's ongoing "Straight from the Bog" marketing campaign, added Teddy Lynn, an Arnold senior vice president and the agency's director of brand experience.

To produce the TV special, Ocean Spray bought the rights to "Cranberry Christmas," a 1976 book written and illustrated by Wende and Harry Devlin, noted an Arnold press release. One character in the story is Cyrus Grape, an old grump who forbids children from skating on the ice over a cranberry bog near his home. At one point during the narrative, there's a break in the action to enjoy Grandma's homemade cookies, which features cranberries as an ingredient.

As it turned out, a producer of the TV version of "Cranberry Christmas," Rick Ungar, knew Manilow and persuaded the pop star to sign on to the project, Arnold's press release noted. (Manilow music and cranberry cookies - the holidays don't get much better than that!)

But here's the $64 question: Why allocate part of your marketing budget to Manilow and animation expenses when the money could be used for buying air-time for 30-second ads instead?

According to Arnold's Lynn, the TV special addresses some of the key challenges that Ocean Spray faces. While the cranberry is well known in New England, it is viewed in many other parts of the country as something pretty much confined to the Thanksgiving dinner table.

One message that the TV show seeks to convey in a very low-key manner is that the cranberry can be a wholesome and a healthful part of any family Christmas celebration, Lynn said. That message has to be very subtle indeed: Government regulations restrict overt branding in programs aimed at children, Lynn noted.

The TV special "Cranberry Christmas," which was produced to fit into a 30-minute time slot, debuted earlier this month as part of the ABC network's 25 days of Christmas series. Ocean Spray does not disclose the size of its marketing budget; nor did it say how much it spent on the "Cranberry Christmas" project.

Lynn said of "Cranberry Christmas," "We're hoping that it will be a holiday perennial, something that's shown every year, like a Charlie Brown Christmas special."

That would be fine by Ocean Spray's Martin.

"We think it could be an annual feature that celebrates the cranberry," he said.

The 2007 file photo of Manilow was taken by photographer Michael Falco for The New York Times. The image of the "Cranberry Christmas" book cover was taken from the Amazon.com website.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)