- Have you heard the Wispa?
Is sponsored by Cadbury.
Cadbury is going through a branding nightmare, sacrificing all its different brands for a uniform style and size across all its chocolate bars.
For example. Wispa. Much vaunted when it first arrived, hugely popular throughout its life, dumped unceremoniuosly and with little hype for its successor. Welcome Dairy Milk Bubbly, a brand of chocolate which plays on the history of the chocolate used, rather than the bar. Gone is the distinctive shape, replaced by a uniform size, to fit in with the rest of the Cadbury selection.
By doing this, Cadbury are implying that their chocolate bars are uniform - they all have the same size, they all have the same type of chocolate in them. And if you're not enticed by the wrapper design, your eye will skip across the display, looking for something new. They're targeting a single market, and I know all about the pitfalls of doing that. I saw it on a property show on Channel 4.
I care about this a bit. Don't know why, but I do.
4 December, 2003
Mr BW is going to be very, very cross.
No longer will he be able to get chocolate bars to fit his antique (well, old) chocolate machine that lives in his workshop. It takes 2 shilling bits (old 10ps).
When he's been good I give him a 10p for a bar of chocolate. I will have to think of a new strategy. Let's see... what can I come up with?
I'm not one for buying bars of chocolate these days, but doesn't it just make it more confusing if they all look very similar? Surely a distinctive pack is a plus point for a brand? Otherwise you run the risk of picking up a Bubbly when you wanted a Caramel or something, which isn't a good customer experience.
I suppose I must be missing the point, but this move seems like a bit of a Consignia to me.
Rebranding is all the rage, I'll have you know!! There's nothing like the rush you get from spending several million pounds completely needlesslessly. And the customers love being kept on their toes about what their brands are going to look like next they're hunting for them in the supermarket! My husband's office managed to spend one million of taxpayers' quids choosing exactly the right shade of blue for their logo... And they so were right to do it, because the weather forecasts are soooo much better since they did.
