• by Karl Greenberg , March 17, 2008

Nestle is promoting its PowerBar energy food brand with a national advertising campaign bearing the tagline "Power to Push" and featuring six-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps.

The campaign comprises television, print and online advertising, event marketing and consumer engagement opportunities. Creative focuses on Phelps, solo climber Tommy Caldwell, and amputee marathoner and triathlete Amy Palmiero-Winters.

The centerpiece is a 30-second spot showing Phelps, who is training for the Beijing Olympics this summer, preparing to dive into a pool full of sharks. The spot will air on targeted sports programming through fall 2008, including ESPN, TNT, and The Tour de France on Versus.

In the TV spot, Phelps walks into an indoor Olympic-sized pool in which one can see silhouettes of sharks. He's unconcerned, eating a PowerBar. "They say I should be afraid, because every swimmer in the water is out to get me," he says via voiceover. "Fear is good," he says as the gun fires and he dives in.

Print ads--showing Caldwell ascending the vertical face of El Capitan, and Palmiero-Winters--are running in April and May issues of sport enthusiast titles like Bicycling, Runner's World, Outside, Men's Health and Women's Health.

The company also launched a Web-based training tool called PowerCoach at PowerBar.com/push. The tool offers personalized sports nutrition and training regimens. Publicis Mid-America, Dallas, handles.

Chicago brand consultancy Mintel's report on nutrition energy bars, published a year ago, said that for the previous three years, the category had suffered tepid sales because of a mature market and competition from other categories.

The firm reports that of the three major categories--wellness, athletic and diet bars--the wellness-bar segment of the market has seen the strongest results followed by athletic bars. Wellness bars have 35.5% share and sales gains of 9% from 2002 to 2006. Mintel says, however, that the athletic bar segment, with 36.4% sales growth during that period, is gaining. Diet bars have been hurt by consumers abandoning the low-carb diets, per Mintel.

PowerBar leads the category with 17% of the market, followed by Clif with 16.8%, supported by success of Luna Bar. Mintel reported that more than a third of PowerBar users say they use this brand to support physical activity, and nearly as many use it for general health and wellness.

The firm reported that overall sales of nutrition and energy bars dropped 12.7% between 2004 and 2006, partly because of a change in sales from big-box stores to convenience stores and natural foods stores. Mintel estimated that Wal-Mart accounts for roughly 17% of sales of nutrition and energy bars.