The emotional hook is what they want – what they need – and it is what keeps them turning over billions. In business terms, they want what is known as ‘the lifetime value of a customer’. That’s why they can spend millions advertising something which costs about 30p. It’s the repetition they want and what better way to guarantee that than the emotional hook. This is why pop bands, which already have an emotional hook with their huge child fan base, are paid millions of pounds by companies such as Cadbury. The priceless emotional hook has already been established. What’s more, the children also trust the band, so if the pop group eats or drinks it, the children believe it must not only be cool but also good. This is why getting Harry Potter signed up was such an incredible coup for our friends at Mars and Coca-Cola. Harry Potter is a modern day phenomenon and if they can get Harry to eat a Mars and drink a Coke … that really would be magic!
As I’m sure you’re starting to realize, the chocolate industry will use just about any emotion, any situation to give the impression that their particular chocolate will help in some way. They are trying, very successfully, to build a relationship between you and the product. The bond ends up being so great that even a simple name change, let alone giving it up, can cause people to get a little touchy.
‘It’s a Marathon, for Christ’s Sake!’
See what I mean? Uniformed branding is extremely important to the big players in the chocolate world, and it means they can achieve global sponsorship and brand familiarity worldwide. This was the problem Mars had sponsoring in the 1984 Olympics, they quickly realized they didn’t have uniformity. It was then they set out to make sure that all chocolate bars in the US would be instantly recognizable across the globe. Hence Marathon becoming Snickers, Treets becoming M&Ms, etc. Once they have uniformity they know their job will be made much, much easier in the future.
The loyalty to brands is so strong that instead of bringing out brand-new chocolate bars, which can involve incredible risk, years from idea to birth, and millions in cash building a new relationship, they simply add different ingredients and produce a different version of an already named brand. This is why we get many different versions of M&Ms and products such as Milky Way Dark and Snow Flake.
Generating a following and brand loyalty is something the chocolate industry seemingly will go to any lengths to achieve. Not long after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Mars used huge amounts of emotional advertising to achieve what the press called ‘the Snickerization of Russia’. Months prior to introducing the Russians to their first ‘hit’ of this legal drug food, they carefully manipulated their minds, not just by erecting massive billboards showing their glossy packaged products, but also dangling the emotional hook by throwing a Christmas party for disadvantaged children – sounds generous, until you understand the motives behind the move. The party included a rock party for 4,000 teens, which attracted large TV coverage. TV coverage in a country with only one or two channels does nothing other than link the Mars brand to ‘party mood’ and generosity. On top of this they ran an advertising campaign which used the theme:
‘All the World Loves M&Ms’
A statement which is untrue, but it was still allowed to be used. The combination of the advertising and ‘generosity’ meant that the Russians had been mentally teased on a massive scale. So much so that on 4 January 1990, a quarter of a mile of Russians, pockets stuffed with roubles, police at the ready, queued to get their first taste of the West. Mars sold more than 20 tons of chocolate in just two days, and this was with a restriction on how much each person could buy! In a very short space of time Mars had achieved its objectives – to create an emotional hook to the brand before supplying them with the chemical ‘hit’.
However, the chocolate advertising boys and girls don’t always get it right when dabbling in politics to help sell their wares. The not-so-forward-thinking Cadbury marketing people in India thought they would try to sell more chocolate by playing on the biggest issue facing the world’s largest democracy – Kashmir. This is an issue which continues to threaten to plunge India and its neighbour, Pakistan, into nuclear war. Newspaper advertisements for the Temptations range of chocolate depicted a map of Kashmir alongside the riddle: ‘I’m good. I’m tempting. I’m too good to share. What am I? Cadbury’s Temptations or Kashmir?’ As soon as it came out, as you can well imagine, waste matter hit the fan and the company were forced to apologize. Mr Vinod Tawde, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party said, ‘Why use an emotive issue like Kashmir to promote products?’ The answer is very clear – because it works … usually! They want to stir up emotions – that’s the whole point. They want people to take notice. Unfortunately for them this one backfired, but they’re usually spot on.
ET – EXTRA TURNOVER
Although advertising and sponsorships are clear winners, they pale into complete insignificance when compared to good product placement. If you can get a picture of a Milky Way or Flake in a blockbuster film like James Bond, you’ve done well, but get Bond to eat it on screen and WHAM – you have a winner! With that in mind, please spare a thought for Mars who turned down Steven Spielberg’s offer for M&Ms to be ET’s favourite sweet in one of the biggest grossing films of all time. Perhaps they didn’t think the film would ever catch the public imagination – dough! Instead, the contract went to Mars’ rival, Hershey and their sweet named Reese’s Pieces. Although not a chocolate product, there are few who believe Reese’s Pieces were not designed to go head to head with Mars’ bestselling product, M&Ms – they even look similar. Jack Dowed was Hershey’s marketing man at the time and there is just no way that he or anyone at Hershey could have envisaged just what a coup getting the ET gig was. Nothing like that had ever been done before and although the thought seems crazy now, at the time it was a massive $ lm risk. Bear in mind that Dowed made the deal without seeing a script or an image of the alien, and with the knowledge that although Spielberg had been successful with films such as Duel and Jaws, his previous film 1941 starring John Belushi completely bombed. However, according to Dowed himself it turned out, ‘The biggest marketing coup in history’. With such emotional triggers proclaiming that Reese’s Pieces were ‘ET’s favourite sweet’ being plastered everywhere, and with cinemas all over the country putting the product in prime buying spots in their display cabinets, sales shot through the roof. Distributors reported as much as a tenfold increase during the 14-day film launch.
THE ULTIMATE CHOCOLATE RAPPER
Mars may have missed out there, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they struck lucky as the biggest-selling rap artist of all time adopted the street name of one of their bestselling chocolates – M&Ms. Now you may think I’ve made a huge mistake here and that it’s not M&M but Eminem. In fact, when this incredible rapper started out his name really was M&M. The cost to Mars for this association – sweet nothing!
IT’S ALL ‘OK’ IT SEEMS
Because good product placement has the power to reap such incredible financial rewards, it appears the chocolate companies will stop at nothing to get a shot of some celebrity eating their product into a magazine or newspaper. A few years ago OK magazine paid Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey an undisclosed six-figure sum for the exclusive wedding picture rights. It is something which Anthea Turner now deeply regrets, and for a very good reason. As part of the ‘exclusive’ deal, OK was to sell-on just one photo of the happy day to the UK daily newspapers. Unfortunately for them, the photograph OK chose to sell to the newspapers was one of the couple eating a chocolate bar. The magazine thought it was more than OK to have a deal with Cadbury. Their job was to make sure they got a good picture of Anthea and Grant eating one of Cadbury’s new chocolate bars named ‘Snowflake’. They managed to get their prize picture by persuading Anthea and Grant – at the end of a long day – to pose for one last ‘tongue-in-cheek’ photo.
Despite what so