• by Kristin Sidorak , January 12, 2006

Last year when Diamond Foods purchased a pricey TV commercial in Fox's coverage of Super Bowl XXXIX to promote its Emerald Nuts brand some people thought the food marketer was, well, nuts. That was before the spot sent the snack foods sales soaring 56 percent. On Wednesday, Emerald announced it would be back in the Big Game, expanding its catchy acrostic campaign with a Super Bowl spot that will tie into a multimedia effort.

The play on the "E N" acronym used this past year by Emerald will expand and use E-M-E-R-A-L-D N-U-T-S to depict ludicrous situations the brand's managers hope will leave a lasting impression on viewers.

"Our whole Emerald campaign is integrated with TV, print, and online," says Emerald spokesperson Vicki Zeigler, noting that Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco, the agency behind the successful "Got Milk" campaign, is handling Emerald's effort. The new commercial will air in the same place Emerald aired its commercial last yearin the fourth quarter of the game.

Print ads will appear in The New York Times and USA Today for the ten days preceding Super Bowl XL, featuring artwork by New Yorker cartoonists J.C. Duffy and Jack Ziegler.

Online ads will appear solely on Yahoo!'s home page from January 23 through February 26, utilizing flash animation that will roll with the E-M-E-R-A-L-D N-U-T-S theme.

Both the print and online Yahoo! Ads will direct consumers to the Emerald websitethe online ads allow consumers to link to www.emeraldnuts.com, where they can view the new Emerald print ads and participate in a new creative contest for their acrostic ads.

"One reason that we decided to do this contest," says Zeigler, "is that, following our campaign that began in January 2004, people were sending us suggestions for the acrostic campaign, unsolicitedand we thought, people are engaged, and the ideas were greatso we're going to reward them now."