• by Karl Greenberg , June 10, 2009

Unilever's Breyers Ice Cream brand has launched the next iteration of its Web-based film parodies of Hollywood classics to back its Smooth & Dreamy Light ice cream.

The series, starring "30 Rock" actress Jane Krakowski, has her eating Smooth & Dreamy ice cream, then slipping into daydreams that revive the original films, except with Krakowski as co-star. The new film launched on Wednesday on www.SmoothandDreamy.com/love.

The parody is the second following a "Gone With the Wind" film in which Krakowski plays a southern belle to Rhett Butler. The new effort has Krakowski meeting King Kong and having witty repartee with the gigantic primate, commenting on his manners and insecurities.

The parodies use real footage by inserting Krakowski "inside" the actual movies, with the conceit that she's daydreaming it all while eating Smooth & Dreamy ice cream. In "King Kong," the giant ape is her fantasy of an Internet date gone horribly wrong. In "Gone With the Wind," she imagines she's Scarlett O'Hara.

The effort includes consumer content elements, whereby people can upload photos of themselves and then insert them into the webisodes as either Rhett Butler or King Kong. They can also email their personalized webisodes to their friends and post them to social networking pages.

A promotional element dangles a week-long trip to Hollywood for four people, a Warner Bros. VIP Studio Tour and $5,000 cash. The webisodes were produced by Mindshare Entertainment, a division of Mindshare Worldwide. Krakowski and Gail Mancuso were involved.

Market-research firm Mintel says the diet ice cream segment -- driven by products like Wells' Dairy's Weight Watchers and Nestle's Smart Ones -- helped the frozen novelties segment grow by $201 million, or 7.5%, between 2003 and 2008. But the firm says the market will remain flat between 2009 and 2013, partly because a significant number of ice cream consumers will not sacrifice flavor for fewer fat or calories.

In a survey of 1,876 adults with access to the Internet, who ate ice cream, frozen novelties, frozen yogurt or gelato in past 12 months, Mintel found that low-fat claims were most important, with as many as 42% rating them very/somewhat important. Low-calorie claims were second, although one-third of consumers consider these claims unimportant, meaning that there is a diversion between health-oriented and indulgence-oriented consumers, per the firm.

Specifically, respondents ages 25-34 had a higher-than-average degree of interest in the low-fat and low-calorie health claims, but relatively average interest in low-sugar or low-cholesterol claims.