Instead it will spotlight its grab-bag of brand names, making only small-type references to each as a `member' of the US's largest financial-services concern.

Procter & Gamble, the Cincinnati consumer-products giant, spends hundred of millions of dollars on ads each year but almost entirely to promote its slew of brands, which include Tide detergent, Pringles potato chips and Cover Girl cosmetics. Citigroup's strategy will be evident with Citi-group's Travelers Insurance unit unveiling a new televisions and print campaign costing an estimated $10 million.

It will resurface in autumn, when the company's Citi-bank unit, which spends an estimated $800 million a year on global ads,plans to undertake a major marketing push, partly to promote new Internet-based products.

Along with the company's gaggle of brand names--Citibank, Travelers, Salomon Smith Barney, Primerica Financial Services and Commercial Credit--comes a variety of advertising agencies and a smattering of differing styles, images and messages. Consolidation of advertising efforts is often a way for merging companies to cut costs, find ``synergies'' and portray unity, but Citigroup is keeping things pretty much as they were before it was formed by the merger of Travelers Group and Citicorp.

The idea, according to Citigroup officials: Build on the individual brand names of Citigroup's businesses rather than cloud the picture with bold references to Citigroup, which is simply a holding company.

That strategy is in sharp contrast to JP Morgan and Chase, both of which have recently launched new ad campaigns designed to polish their overall corporate identities and both of which have the advantage of enjoying a singlebrand name for the company and its products.

Citibank's global ad account is staying with Young & Rubicam, which recently unveiled new Citibank ads in Australia, Germany and Hong Kong, say Citigroup officials. Y&R is also expected to be involved in an autumn marketing push for Citibank, which most likely will include the promotion of the bank's new e-products, such as a revved-up online banking service and an electronic wallet.

Y&R's latest US effort for Citibank shows animated bunnies made of dollar bills that sniff around and multiply. These service-specific ads plug checking accounts with an auto-save feature and carry the tagline ``Where Money Lives.''

Meanwhile, Interpublic Group's McCann-Erickson continues as the ad agency for Salomon Smith Barney, Citigroup's brokerage unit, an account estimated at $20 million; a current campaign that began running about a year ago uses a `Success Is Earned' tagline. McCann's spots for Citigroup also were chosen to air during the Masters. The new Travelerscampaign was made by Merkley Newman Harty in New York, which has been Travelers' ad agency since before the merger.

The new Travelers ads mark a fresh strategy for the insurance unit after it strayed off-message in its last campaign, which ran until last month, says Keith Anderson, Travelers spokesman. ``The old campaign tried to explain our products in a way that was much too nitty-gritty and product-detailed,'' he says, adding, ``I'm not sure it was all that effective.''

This time around, the campaign focuses not on individual insurance lines such as travel insurance, health insurance or business insurance, but on the reassurance that insurance provides.

``She's thinking about the milky way, she's thinking about her first employee, she's thinking about the light on her porch, she's not thinking about insurance,'' says one of the black-and-white ads that features a woman on a plane. ``She doesn't have to,'' it concludes.

The ads also break new ground by pushing Travelers'--now Citigroup's--redumbrella symbol without attaching the Travelers name to it, at least not at first. The goal: To establish the red umbrella as a stand-alone image, the way Nike has done with its `swoosh,' Anderson.

The Asian Wall Street Journal