Old, new, borrowed and blue - or purple

 

One of my favourite German ads from last year was this 1980s extravaganza from Perwoll. And little did I know it last March, but this heralded a rather nifty “practice what you preach” trend in the ad world. Ad recycling. 

Mars went all-out for it with their Healthy Planet Productions Campaign , where well-loved ads for M&Ms, Twix and Bounty have been repurposed to draw attention to the carbon impact of advertising and get some new messages across about climate change. All while saving on production costs to client coffers and planet. 

The other bit of good news about this is that System1, suppported by Mark Ritson, have long been casting doubt on the marketer’s bugbear of “wearout". If an ad is any good, it might still do your brand good 19 years later, rather like one of the Princess Royal’s outfits, which never seem to wear out.

Recycled and repurposed items made it onto the Christmas wish list for many responsible citizens. And responsibly-minded clients got recycled ads. If not the specific execution, then at least the idea - such as Cadbury’s extending their previous year’s campaign into OOH media.

And then there was the heartwarming recycling of the Shake ’n’ Vac song, or Double Diamond works wonders and other jingles from the past as reminiscence therapy for dementia patients via Heart radio and The Wayback Project. 

And the trend shows no sign of abating. This rather wonderful film from Cadbury’s (again) is not really a direct recycle, more a mix of old, new, borrowed and blue. Or is that purple?

What’s clever here is that it not only reinterprets the original Cadbury’s Mum’s Birthday ad ... but it also borrows from a rich school of “heritage” ads - something that the Brits do particularly well:

Some may bemoan the lack of creativity and originality here, but I beg to disagree. Choosing exactly the right combination of familiar and surprising elements for these films is an art.

Could 2024 be the year of the Circular Adconomy?

RETROWURST: Nutella November 2005

 

Eighteen years ago, I was celebrating the 40th birthday of Nutella in Extrawurst, and my hm-hm-hm-hmth birthday. For those with a sweet tooth, here’s the history and cult status of the chocolate hazelnut spread as I saw it in 2005.

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As I have recently been celebrating my birthday, I thought I would write a piece about a brand that is celebrating its 40^th birthday this year in Germany.

 

On the subject of brands having birthdays, this does seem to have become “this year’s thing” for marketers here, perhaps in the absence of anything new to say. We had thirty years of IKEA last year and now every corner shop, local newspaper and frozen pizza seems to be celebrating some birthday or another. Just as the market here has been deluged with “flavour of the year/season” for the last few years, we now seem to be beset with birthdays. Most of it seems to be an excuse to dig out some “retro” pack designs and revel in the worst excesses of the 70s, 80s or whatever decade your brand was born into in a rather self-congratulatory way rather than offering people any new benefit or real reward for buying you in the first place.

 

In this case, however, I feel that the celebrations are justified: the brand in question is Nutella which I believe is one of the most “present” brands in the German psyche. Over 100 million jars of the stuff are sold per year with the average buyer consuming something like 1kg of the stuff per year (oh dear, think of the calories!) and Nutella really is a brand that one could say has achieved cult status in this country. A client of mine (non-German) recently made something of an error of judgment (in my opinion) when she recently turned down the prospect of a co-operation between her brand and Nutella on the basis that Nutella “was too unhealthy”. While, of course, she is right in thinking that Nutella is not among the list of top 5 healthy things to put in your mouth, what she missed is that Nutella is allowed to be unhealthy just because it’s so loved here – like  Bratwurst and Pils it may pile on the calories but it is an integral part of German culture – a rare accolade for a non-German brand!

 

Although officially only 40 years old, Nutella’s origins go further back: to the 1940s in fact. During the war years, chocolate was a rarity, a delicacy and cocoa was in short supply so the Piedmontese confectioner Pietro Ferrero experimented with making a cream out of cocoa and roasted hazelnuts. From the beginning onwards, Ferrero’s experiment was a success and even incorporated an interesting retail concept in 1940s/50s Italy whereby schoolchildren could go to the local corner shop with a piece of bread and get it spread with the forerunner of Nutella.

 

In 1964 the nut-nougat crème got the name Nutella. Ferrero Germany had already opened its doors in 1956 and introduced Nutella in 1965. Nutella really created a whole new market in Germany for a country used to either jam or honey as sweet spreads for the breakfast bread.

 

There are now several generations of Germans who have grown up with Nutella – it’s rather like Marmite in the UK but it doesn’t have quite that extreme love-hate relationship: everyone loves Nutella except for a few extreme health campaigners. Nutella signifies childhood and family: there is something very motherly and reassuring about the name, the pack design (almost unchanged from the original of 1965), the shape of the jar and the sweet, creamy product itself. And, unlike Marmite, it is pretty versatile stuff: you can make cakes with it, slap it on pancakes and Nutella seems to be a fairly major component of most of the confectionary products that Ferrero produces these days.

 

The cult status of Nutella in Germany is observable through the sheer presence of the brand in Germany. It’s not just on practically every breakfast table but also highly visible on pancake stands in the city centre or at Fests, on T-shirts (the aforementioned unchanged pack design), in bookshops (“Das große Nutella Kochbuch”), on e-Bay (collectors of promotional jars or giveaways) and there are even Nutella cafés in some city centres where you can have a cup of coffee and eat your fill of various Nutella concoctions – all this in addition to the expected supermarket and classic media presence. Of course, anything that is successful and cult spawns cover versions. In Nutella’s case they are numerous and quite blatant in their copying of the mother of all hazelnut spreads, from Lidl’s Choco Nussa to Aldi’s Nutoka but none of them have quite managed to copy the subtleties of Ferrero’s secret recipe.

 

Of course, cult status brings you more than your fair share of urban myths. In Nutella’s case these include the positive (“Nutella is a wonder cure for cold sores and other forms of Herpes.”) and the not-so desirable (“Nutella gets its colour from cow blood.”). But none of these myths seem to be so extreme as those associated with McDonald’s or Procter & Gamble’s brands – maybe Nutella’s “Italian Mamma” personality makes it less vulnerable to attack than those brands which are assumed to be run and controlled by George W. Bush doppelgangers.

 

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Nutella’s cult status is that much of this comes not so much from TV advertising but from in-store and on-pack promotions. While there have been some memorable TV campaigns (involving some of the usual suspects here such as the ubiquitous Boris Becker), it is the special promotions that have become collector’s items. A 2kg jar was available in 2000 for the millennium, for example, and the 40^th birthday promotional packs were soon sold out. These included stencils of characters from Asterix concealed in the lid which was a repeat of a promotion originally from the 1970s or 1980s.

It seems to be fitting, then, that Nutella celebrated its 40^th birthday with a spectacular promotion: the biggest breakfast in the world. No less than 27,854 Nutella fans turned up to the event which earned Nutella a place in the Guinness Book of records. So, here’s to the next 40 years unless the extreme healthy-eating killjoys get there first!

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Only a few months after writing this article, I suffered a public humiliation that I’ll never live down. I took part in an on-air radio quiz and was asked to name which German football players featured in the Nutella ad for the 2006 World Cup. I didn’t know. Me, working in advertising, with a football-crazy husband. 

I still hang my head in shame.

As for Nutella, well, the healthy eating police are still stomping around, but not to any great effect. The latest member of the Nutella family is biscuits.

And me? Sorry, but I still prefer Marmite. I’m not that German.

  

Which brands do you want to cosy up to?

 

Back at the turn of the Millennium, it was called “cocooning”, a retreat from the 24/7 always-on world. It took on a Sacndinavian flavour in the last decade or so, in the form of hygge or mysig, with Instagram as a perfect medium to sing its praises. And it has been the over-riding trend and desire throughout the pandemic - and quite possibly something some people will be reluctant to move away from as the outside world re-opens. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if workplaces become more homely once the workers return. Like kindergartens that allow children to bring one special soft toy or security blanket. When it eventually comes to Covid nostalgia - which it surely will - this word, this concept, will be top of many people’s lists.

I’m talking about cosiness. You can see its takeover of our world across fashion, across home furnishings and across books, to name just a few. The “cosy mystery” genre of the fiction section - those stories involving amateur sleuths in a picturesque community, with very little blood and gore to be seen - is selling like hot-cakes. Along with cuddly blankets decorated with pizza patterns.

Cats, crosswords, cakes, Christmas, crochet, cottages and countryside - all cosiness.

Cosiness is different to comfort. It is, if you like, a combination of comfort and joy as the song goes. While comfort is often sought to right a wrong, or can simply be the absence of unpleasant feelings, cosiness is a positive choice.

Cosiness is about free will, not a reaction to being victimised in some way.

Cosiness is very much about the senses, especially the sense of touch.

Despite the ubiquity of cosiness around us, there are very few brands that expound cosiness as a value. Maybe it’s because of the ubiquity, maybe because marketing people feel cosiness is too fluffy, not dynamic enough, not lofty enough.

But I think it would be a welcome alternative to all those rather high-powered brand purposes, tiring-sounding manifestoes, and being preached to.    

Goodie-goodie brands

The current COVID-19 crisis has brought them all skipping out across the daisy-strewn meadow - the oh-so-virtuous po-faced brands with their interchangeable #inspiringhashtag films, beautifully parodied here.

The films aren't the end of it, either. All the goodie-goodie brands in class have their hands permanently raised to get the teacher's attention. Look what I've done, Miss, look-at-me, look-at-me, aren't I a good little boy/girl/whatever? Actions speak louder than words, but most of these actions aren't for their own sake, but to shout about on social media, or to get on "great things brands are doing" lists.

It's said that the current crisis will accelerate a few things that are happening anyway, like digital transformation. I suspect another is brands raiding the virtuous dressing-up box for values which they'll try (in a not particularly virtuous way) to "own". Interestingly, some of the classic virtues seem more in demand - humanity, kindness, empathy, compassion and charity being top of the pile - while others are relegated to the bottom of the said box - can't see many brands positioning themselves on diligence, patience or humility these days.

There's an interesting extract from an article here entitled From Gorilla to Generosity about the Cadbury brand. Back in 2007, everyone was raving about the Gorilla commercial, but it now seems that history is being rewritten - the ad "failed to reflect the brand", despite being hugely memorable and successful in its own way.

It seems to me that the Cadbury story was a classic case of planning post-rationalising an inspired piece of creative that in all probability just happened, with no rhyme or reason. Someone, somewhere worked out that maybe Gorilla was about "joy" so that became the positioning officially in 2012.

But by this time Cadbury had been taken over by Kraft/Mondelez, adding all the complications that a global owner brings. What's happened to our chocolate, came the cry as factories were closed. This may or may not have prompted the move from the generic, somewhat self-orientated and distinctly unownable "joy" to a "reconnection with the roots" and the current positioning, based on kindness and generosity flowing from the product truth of "a glass and a half."

There's been some nice work done for the brand, but part of me questions the credibility. Can you go back to your roots and be accepted there if you've turned your back on your origins for the global high-life?

And is something like "generosity" a bit too goodie-goodie for chocolate? I miss the silliness and humour of chocolate advertising that played, not with the virtues, but with the sins - envy, greed, gluttony - in a light-hearted and very human way.

Th' milk of human kindness

I've got a little prediction. Brand managers will notice that the poster girls of 'Purpose' - female empowerment, body positivity and gender stereotyping - are getting a little long-in-the-tooth and been there/done that, and will start casting around for replacements. Maybe something that's a little less MeMeMe?

A few strands of thought will coalesce. Reports about the divisions and fault lines in society. The movements against online bullying and trolling - #BeKind - and the debate surrounding this. The trend to "uplit" in the publishing world. The call for more empathy, even though people that work in advertising and marketing aren't as good at that one as they think. And, of course, brands that have already taken the first step.

Coca Cola has recently announced its refreshed purpose as "unite and uplift". To me this sounds rather like the opposite of the old Playtex Cross Your Heart line which was about lifting and separating. Brushing that aside, though, as Graham Booth states in the blog post, Coca Cola kind of has uniting in its DNA, although there's been some dilly-dallying around with other ideas in the last few years.

The launch commercial, "Could I be wrong?" has been out for a couple of weeks. We've yet to see if it joins the realms of classic Coca Cola ads such as "Hilltop".


And another variant on the "be nice to each other" theme is Cadbury's, whose brand moved (in 2018) from catalysing moments of joy (which are a little MeMeMe) to moments of kindness to others, specifically generosity, with the idea that "there's a glass and half in everyone."

I'm not sure what the best translation is for "kind" in German - there's "freundlich", which also has connotations of friendliness and approachability. Or "nett" which is simply "nice" with the same sort of connotations. And the words "gütig/gutmütig" which are to do with Goodness.

And this is the thing with kindness. I do think it's a valid area for a brand purpose, but it really isn't a one-size-fits-all thing. I'd hate to see the advertising world awash with "th' milk of human kindness" in the way it's been over-run with increasingly cliched babble about female empowerment.

You can ask children to play nicely if you're a nanny or or primary school teacher. But you can't tell adults to be kind. Kindness comes from within, from your values, and isn't just about some stunt involving random acts, or forcing people with extreme opposing views to drink a beer together.

What unique role does your brand play in kindness? Is it about bringing people together, sharing, helping, caring, understanding ...?

I do hope that the idea of kindness will be a rich seam for marketers.

Yet, advertising industry, do I fear thy nature when it comes to band wagons.

What looks good on paper ...

I've spent more than enough years working on brand extensions of this, that or the other and the question has always been - how far can you go? The answer to that one depends on the brand, and just how flexible and stretchable its essence really is. And what's vital to the brand's coherent meaning apart from its essence.

I saw a classic example (in my opinion) of a step too far in the supermarket this weekend: Kerrygold Irish Cream.

Now, I can just imagine the brainstorming or workshop that led to this one. The core of the Kerrygold Brand Onion (Cheese and Onion, anyone?) has probably got the words "Irish" and "Dairy" in it. So some smart Alec (or Alexa) no doubt put one and one together and thought: "I know! Let's copy Baileys!"

This probably looked like a great idea on a flip chart decorated with neon Post-Its.

But, if you have to take the onion model, what about all those outer layers? If you ignore those, you can quite easily come up with something that stands in opposition to them. I'm not a fan of the onion method for defining a brand - I prefer to get an intuitive feel for brands via long-term knowledge and experience, and from my feel for Kerrygold, I would suggest the following:

Kerrygold is an everyman/woman/child brand - for all the family, not just the niche segment of middle-aged girls who drink sickly-sweet liqueurs

Kerrygold, if it has a time of day, is about morning, the sun rising, breakfast-time, the twittering of the birds and the dew still kissing that lush green meadow

Kerrygold, if it has a place is outdoors, with beautiful rolling emerald fields, an azure sky, buttercups and daisies

And finally, Kerrygold is savoury in taste - lightly salted butter, mellow cheddar kind-of-savoury. Kerrygold wouldn't (I hope) go into chocolate, so why a chocolate liqueur?

I wouldn't want Lurpak to copy Häagen-Daz and go into ice cream.

And neither would I advise Cadbury's to start making cheese.

A Snickers by any other name would taste as sweet

One of the best campaign insights of recent years is that from Snickers: You're Not You When You're Hungry. I know my family will certainly attest to the truth of this one, and it's a great idea that the brand have been using in their advertising for seven years now. So it definitely has legs. Or peanuts.

The latest incarnation of the campaign idea is individual named Snickers bars with a choice of 21 alter-hungry-egos from Stroppy to Grouchy to Moaner to Drama Mama to Faffer to Grumpster. Sounding vaguely like a re-imagining of the 7 dwarfs, the idea is either to buy one for yourself (as a warning to others) or, better still, for a chum or family member.

I know that this idea is adapted from the 'Share a Coke' thought, but I find it even better. Not only is the personalisation element there, but it ties in with a long-running campaign based on a super insight into human nature, which Snickers have made their own. In the US, where they've already run this idea, they got an impressive uplift in sales, and I'm not surprised.

I can almost, almost forgive the brand its own name change from Marathon right back in 1990.

Almost. But not when I'm hungry.

Good for Lidl!

When I first arrived in Germany, back in the 90s, the grocery discounters Aldi, Lidl and their imitators were rather depressing, soulless places. There was a grim warehouse feel to them and you had to gather up strength for a visit - was it really worth braving that strangely alien totalitarian-style experience for the few pfennigs that you might save?

Things have changed since then, of course, and the German discount giants are now giving Tesco, Sainsbury's et al more than a run for their money in the UK. What has interested me is that these retail chains seem to have learned from their expansion into different cultures, and have re-applied that learning to their home operations.

Take Lidl's new multi-media campaign, for example. Back in the 90s, I don't suppose Lidl would have dreamed of spending money on TV, but if you view the commercial above, you'll see that they haven't just coughed up for media, they've invested rather a lot in the production itself.

The campaign is all about quality, although that word itself is not mentioned too frequently. Lidl uses the word gut - good. The image film is all about how do we tell what's good? It's not about what people say or tell you, or what's expensive, or what everyone else thinks is good. It's about what is good for us personally - through the evidence of our senses - what feels good.

The story continues in the weekly brochures, each taking a theme. We've had coffee, where the elements of "good" - how it's roasted, the selection of beans, the drinking experience and character, the proof through stamps and tests, and a good price - are explored. Or this week it's chocolate, where it's about melt-in-the-mouth, and ingredients, and responsible production - and the price.

Over on the website there are plenty more stories about bread, about meat, about fruit and veg, about wine. And links back to the TV spots, such as this one for chocolate.  It's scrumminess captured on film.

Quality is one of those Holy Grails in marketing that many advertising campaigns have tried to capture, but failed.

It's ironic that one of the few that has succeeded should be a lowly discounter.

A sweet idea

With football fever revving up in earnest, it's mildly amusing to see which brands are joining in with the fun, and who's opting out of the mad samba spectacle.

I'm a bit disappointed with Coke's creativity. After the wonderful "share a Coke with..." personalised bottles last year, all they've done is recycle that one, with the names of the team - and just the German team as far as I can see.

A much sweeter and cleverer idea is that from Kinder Schokolade  with the Fußball-Star-Edition. The usual smiling youngster has been replaced by some less familiar-looking Jungs. Or are they less familiar? On closer inspection, they are young versions of famous German players from good old Rudi Völler, through to Michael Ballack and Jens Lehmann to stars of today such as Lukas Podolski and Sami Khedira.

Brilliant idea - it has everything: collectability, multi-generation appeal, topicality, limited edition rarity, the awww factor for the mums, and totally in character with the brand.

All they have to do is win and those packs will be worth a bomb one day.

But then again, England are going to win this time, aren't they?

Eggsactly the same?

Some people would say "Eggs is Eggs," to which I'd probably launch into a discussion about fried and scrambled and poached and hard-boiled, not to mention duck and quail and...

Our travels at Easter took us back to the UK for a long-awaited wallow in Marmite and HP Sauce and Colman's Mustard and all the other exotic treats that are hard to come by here in Germany. But one thing I have never had a particular yearning for is Cadbury's Creme Eggs. I could certainly never eat more than one in any Easter season and I never spent too much time worrying whether I was a Biter or a Slurper or a Licker or however else You Were Meant To Eat Yours.

Easter Eggs for me, were always Big - a shell of chocolate that ideally broke conveniently in half to reveal a little bag of Buttons, or Roses, or Maltesers or somesuch, the whole thing delightfully impenetrable in foil and coloured cellophane and impractical boxes and ribbons.

When I moved to Germany, I got a culture shock. Here it was not about the size of the individual eggs, but about the quantity. About hiding and collecting. About variety and fifty shades of tin foil. And not just eggs, but bunnies and chicks and ladybirds and may bugs.

That was the last century, though. And, as surely as Aldi and Lidl have nibbled away at the Tesco and Sainsbury stronghold, so the little eggs have melted British hearts. Inspired, maybe, by the British love of Mini Eggs and Creme Eggs, all sorts of scrumptious small eggs have appeared, along with the bunnies and chicks, many of them (shock!) invaders from the Continent.

Come the end of the Easter holidays, there won't be much difference in the expansion of your waistline whether you've gobbled down zillions of little ones or one Big One, but it is certainly interesting to reflect on Easter Eggs as globalisation in a sweet microcosm.