Giant Food Inc. hurled a ripe apple at Safeway Inc. yesterday, running full-page ads in Baltimore and Washington newspapers implying that its rival's program to assist schools is far less generous than Giant's.
The unusually pointed ads, which ran in The Sun, The Evening Sun and the Washington Post, asserted that Giant's popular "Apples for the Students" program "gives schools the most for their efforts" to collect register tapes that can be turned in for computers and other education equipment.
The ads listed six cases in which Landover-based Giant said it would provide IBM computer equipment to schools on much more liberal terms than Safeway does.
For example, Giant said it would donate an IBM PS/2 Model 40 with an 80-megabyte hard drive to a school that collects $141,000 in register tape receipts. It said Safeway requires $324,000 in cash register tapes for the same piece of equip
ment.
Larry Johnson, public affairs manager for Safeway's Landover-based Eastern Division, said that if it turns out Giant's register tape price is lower, Safeway would react just as if a competitor advertised a lower price on green beans.
"We're prepared to match anybody's price that's out there -- on IBM or Apple," he said, adding that the ad was the first he has seen in which one grocery chain uses comparison advertising against another in connection with a charitable campaign.
"I'm a little bit surprised that they've gone to that extent," Mr. Johnson said. "It's a marketing tool, and that's what they're using it as."
Terry Gans, Giant's vice president for advertising and sales promotion, said yesterday that he was disappointed that the ad was interpreted as a shot at Safeway's generosity.
"We're not trying to shame them or embarrass them or pick a fight with them," Mr. Gans said. "What Safeway does is up to Safeway."
Mr. Gans said the main reason for the ads was "to motivate the schools" to make full use of Giant's program. He said the participation rate was about 20 percent in the Baltimore area during the last campaign and about 33 percent in Washington.
Typically, the schools get register tapes by organizing students to collect tapes from their parents and other shoppers, but there is a wide difference in the response rate at various schools.
"It bothers us to the extent that some schools have missed that there is something they could do to help themselves," he said.
