Post-Grammy Sales Gains Only Modest : Marketing: Few winners have seen dramatic rises on the charts but it may be early. Campaigns to capitalize on the awards are about to begin.

With the Oscars expected to cause their annual rush at the box office, winning filmmakers are already counting their money. But a month after the recording industry’s Grammy Awards, it appears that most of the gold the winners took home was on the statuettes.

After Bonnie Raitt won four Grammys last year, her “Nick of Time” album quickly went from No. 40 to No. 1 on the Billboard pop charts. But albums by this year’s winners such as Quincy Jones (six awards, including best album), Mariah Carey (two, including best new artist) and Phil Collins (best single) experienced no such booms, according to retailers and record company executives.

“Last year, we counted our sales increases in specific winners in the hundreds--this year it was dozens,” said Joel Abramson, manager of Tower Records in West Hollywood.

“I haven’t seen anything take off--not like last year’s Bonnie Raitt,” said Michael Toppe, senior assistant buyer for Best Buy Records, a Midwestern and Southwestern chain based in Bloomington, Minn. “I didn’t see Quincy Jones suddenly turn around, and he was supposedly the big winner. There was a slight pickup on Phil Collins.”

It’s not that sales didn’t pick up at all for this year’s winners: Warner Bros. reports about 100,000 additional sales of Jones’ “Back on the Block” album since the awards. Retailers polled said that both Carey’s “Vision of Love” and Collins’ ”. . . But Seriously” album (which includes the Grammy-winning single “Another Day in Paradise”) experienced modest sales spurts.

The reports of modest gains are substantiated by the charts: Jones’ album, which had fallen off the Top 200 chart, re-entered after the Grammys and moved from No. 187 to No. 143 in the two weeks after the program. It remains at about that point. Collins’ ”. . . But Seriously” went briefly from No. 85 to No. 62, but has since dropped back to No. 105. Carey’s record was already hovering around the No. 1 position in the weeks before the awards. It reached the top and stayed there during the week of the ceremony.

The lack of dramatic post-Grammy sales spurts is due in part to the fact that most of the winners’ records had sold steadily throughout the year and had already run their commercial course. Raitt’s album, in contrast, had sold only about 500,000 copies in its 11 months of release before the 1990 Grammys, then sold a million copies during the 90 days immediately after the awards, according to her label, Capitol Records. To date it has sold 2 million.

Ken Barnes, senior vice president and editor of the music trade magazine Radio & Records, said that this year’s results are more typical.

“In general, the Grammy is an aid to the long-term career, but it doesn’t necessarily mean increased exposure for a particular record,” said Barnes, whose publication tracks airplay, not sales.

If anybody really benefited from the awards, it was lesser-known artists and some country performers, according to retailers.

Sales of records by folk singer Shawn Colvin, who won in the contemporary folk category, jumped significantly, as did sales of records by Harry Connick Jr., who won for male jazz vocal, and country female vocal winner Kathy Mattea, retailers said.

It may be too early to judge the complete impact of the awards on sales, because some of the marketing campaigns designed to capitalize on the Grammys are just being put in place.

Warner Bros., for example, recognizes that Jones’ “Back on the Block” has run its course as an album, but on Tuesday the label released a single featuring two songs from the recording.

“It will be promoted as an excerpt from an album that generated eight Grammys,” said Warner Bros. vice-president of publicity Bob Merlis. “One of the sides is ‘A Place You Find Love,’ which should appeal to the adult stations, and the other side is ‘We Be Doin’ It,’ which fits in with the urban stations.”

Stand-up cutouts of Jones clutching his Grammys will accompany the release in record stores, Merlis said.

It’s taken this long to prepare the release, he said, because records must be promoted with a coordinated campaign of store displays, special releases and radio promotion.