Spreadin' the news

Lee Iacocca, on a visit to the bay area, applies his pitchman's talent to his Olivio brand of buttery spread.

By ROBERT TRIGAUX

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 19, 2000

TAMPA- In the 1960s, Lee Iacocca introduced America to the wildly successful Ford Mustang.

In the late 1970s, he saved Chrysler Corp. from bankruptcy with a bailout by the U.S. government.

In the 1980s, he blossomed as TV's best and bluntest corporate pitchman for Chrysler with the tough talking line: "Trust me -- but if you can find a better car, buy it."

But now, at age 75, can Iacocca and his marketing magic convince consumers to buy a new line of butter substitute?

In Tampa on a promotional tour Tuesday for his Olivio brand of buttery spread, Iacocca the salesman showed he hasn't lost a step.

"I tried to sell lousy cars with my name and it did not work," he quipped, referring to some of Chrysler's less-than-stellar models. "But give the public a good product and good value, and people will buy it."

Iacocca and son-in-law Ned Hentz invited the Tampa Bay media to breakfast at the Marriott Waterside hotel to unveil their Olivio brand of spread in Florida. The spread, which soon will be joined by a bottled oil and a mayonnaise, is available in such supermarkets as Publix, Albertson's and Wal-Mart. The product, which had sales of $3-million last year, already is available in the Northeast, portions of the Midwest and northern California.

Iacocca said he cooked up the idea for a butter substitute while staying at Villa Nicola (named for his father Nicola Iacocca), his six-bedroom, 225-year-old home in the Tuscany region of Italy. As Chrysler CEO in the mid-1980s, he purchased the remote villa while on a corporate shopping trip to buy a piece of Italy's Maserati car company.

With 503 olive trees on the Villa Nicola property, Iacocca went into the olive oil business as a sideline. He soon realized it was not his line of work.

But as an advocate of Mediterranean cuisine, Iacocca wanted to bring the health benefits of olive oil -- an unsaturated fat -- to U.S. palates. That's when he hit on the idea of creating a butter substitute made up in part of olive oil.

With Hentz, Iacocca set up a company called Nicola Corp., hired food product developers and set about creating Olivio premium spread. Dozens of formulas were tried.

One recipe was too heavy on olive oil, creating a green hue to the spread. "That wasn't going to go over well with the American public," Hentz said.

Eventually, they hit on a spread blend of canola and olive oils with hardened soybean oil to produce a margarine-like product. The soybean oil, a saturated fat, does not help Olivio's pitch as a health product. But Iacocca and Hentz said the recipe needed an ingredient to keep the spread solid at room temperature. The two say Olivio still delivers just one gram of fat to butter's seven.

Olivio even has a slogan: "Not butter, better!" It's no coincidence that Olivio's chief operating officer, Vincent Auty, had come up with an earlier motto of butter substitutes popularized by spokesman Fabio: "I can't believe it's not butter."

Nor is the Olivio brand shy touting Iacocca's celebrity name. The spread's packaging reads "Lee Iacocca's" Olivio premium spread. And Iacocca stars in TV ads that will air in Florida in October.

In one ad, Iacocca is cooking in a kitchen, surrounded by children and talking about how his family came up with a butter substitute. The ad ends with a takeoff of Iacocca's famed Chrysler plug:

Child: "If you can find a better spread . . ."

Iacocca: "Or a better cooking oil . . ."

Child: "Buy it!"

Iacocca: "Hey, I'm supposed to say that!"

For all of Iacocca's high profile in the Olivio brand, the former Chrysler executive said he spends little time on the business. Son-in-law Hentz runs the Olivio operation from Boston as president and chief executive.

Olivio's spread is manufactured in Baltimore by Lipton, a unit of the European behemoth Unilever. The primary financial backer of Olivio is a Swedish pension fund, Hagstromer & Qviberg, a deal arranged by Iacocca's financial contacts in Europe.

In retirement, Iacocca says he is busier than ever.

After retiring from Chrysler in the early 1990s, Iacocca briefly teamed up with Las Vegas casino billionaire Kirk Kerkorian in an ill-fated takeover attempt of Chrysler. In the mid-1990s, Iacocca agreed to try and turn around Koo Koo Roo Inc., a char-broiled chicken restaurant chain based in Los Angeles. The company was later sold.

Iacocca also is an investor and a director of a Las Vegas gambling company called Full House Resorts. Despite his decades spent in Detroit's Motor City and his current home in Southern California, Iacocca is no stranger to Florida.

He owned a winter residence for more than 20 years in Boca Raton. Earlier in the 1990s, he was a member of a group led by New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner that tried to purchase the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Last month, he joined the board of Orlando's Holiday RV Superstores Inc./Recreation USA. The chain of recreational vehicle and boat dealerships will sell E-Bikes, electric bicycles built by an Iacocca company called EV Global.

Iacocca started EV Global from scratch in 1997. So far, he said, the company has sold about 10,000 electric-engine bikes.

After running a giant corporation like Chrysler, running a start-up like EV Global is tough, he admits.

"At Chrysler, I could push a button on my desk and an expert on any part of the automotive business would appear," Iacocca said with a laugh. "Now when I push a button, nobody comes."

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