August 22, 2007
Back by Popular Demand
By Bernice Hurst, Managing Director, Fine Food Network
Ah, nostalgia. Many of us have fond memories of food and drink that we no longer find readily available. But thanks to the wonders of the internet, thousands of candy fans have persuaded Cadbury to relaunch Wispa, a chocolate bar popular in the U.K. in the 1980’s.
Tony Bilsborough, Cadbury’s media relations manager, said that the web interest “reveals a consumer passion which swayed our opinion about relaunching Wispa.” In a radio interview, Mr. Bilsborough said the re-launch was an experiment to see whether web interest translates into sales.
Online networking through a combination of websites, blogs and discussion threads turned one person’s cravings for Wispa into an international campaign. According to The Guardian, there were 93 Bring Back Wispa groups on Facebook with approaching 14,000 members as well as strands on MySpace and Bebo. In addition, “clips of Wispa TV advertisements from the chocolate’s heyday in the 1980s – it was introduced in 1981 and discontinued in 2003 – have also been posted on YouTube and similar sites, with fans appealing for missing examples.”
Chris Cleaver of brand strategy specialists, Brandsmiths, shared Mr. Bilsborough’s reservations and told BBC Radio 2 business correspondent Philippa Busby that many people campaign for the sake of it. It’s possible, he suggested, that now they have won this round, they will forget the product and move onto the next thing, just to flex their muscles and prove that consumers count. Alternatively, they may remember the television commercials at least as fondly as they remember the chocolate. And, as Ms. Busby pointed out, the new product may not be what customers remember and sales will not be sustainable.
Discussion questions: Will we see more old brands revived as a result of internet campaigns such as that in the case of Wispa? Do the think consumer efforts to revive brands through online campaigns is an accurate reflection of actual demand for a product?
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Discussion Questions
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Maybe, just maybe, this candy bar thing is a big happy nostalgia ‘goof’ rather than a product crave? Nah…of course it is an important new trend regarding a prematurely shelved gustatory experience and I personally can’t wait until someone reintroduces Chuckles. Heck, I’ll eat three packs a day for at least ten or twenty years!
Nostalgia is huge. Candies, board games, toys like real wood Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, the reborn Mustang and VW Bug, and countless fashion items are in the mix.
We’ve already seen the sweep of bell-bottom jeans, the fedora hat, Converse All-Stars and vintage Nike & Adidas styles. Now striped suspenders worn with jeans and printed tees are on the rise. What’s next, knee-high striped tube socks and shorty short gym shorts? As for hair styles, EVERYTHING goes.
The curve may not be as long as the original for many of these resurgent flashbacks, but the consumer products life cycle has shortened as a whole.
We’ll likely never see vinyl albums and 8-tracks again, but for many items, the graying boomer market definitely creates a market for things fondly remembered.
This sort of thing is happening in multiple industries, not just candy. Discontinued flavors or scents are having a renaissance online. Although a certain product may not be publicly available, if there is enough interest they will make it available online.
Definitely. Nostalgia is proving to be big business in Candy. I see small candy shops spring up all over with brands that go back to the 1950s. What baby boomer wouldn’t want to take a chew once again of Bonamo Turkish Taffy?
Someone’s got to start marketing these brands again…a potentially lucrative segment of the market.
Nostalgia can be an effective marketing tool for brands that are associated with good times and memories. Look at the extensive use of ’60s music to market products to baby boomers today.
However, this doesn’t necessarily translate to a real sustainable product benefit or positioning. Once the nostalgia has been leveraged to reintroduce the brand, it still has to compete with the alternatives.
Cadbury would do well to market Whispa as a Limited Edition candy. That way, they could tap into the nostalgia but recognize that it will probably have a short life cycle.
Sure! This is the long tail–which is now whipping the back end of CPG. And why not? The pattern of demand shifts when product availability becomes a given. It is up to industry to respond to this new, flat demand “curve;” or lose the sale.
From time to time, a product or brand from the past can be reborn. There are several firms that adopt spin-off brands, buying the unwanted brand names from larger companies that can’t be bothered with lower-volume items. The issue for any new or old brand owner: will reviving the item result in enough volume to make it profitable? If the marketing cost is low, because a dedicated group of folks using the internet spread the word, that can help. It’s similar to the stories about dedicate fans agitating for their favorite about-to-be-canceled TV shows. Whether Cadbury brings back Wispa or not, would the sales volume add even 1 cent per share to the profits of the firm?
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Maybe, just maybe, this candy bar thing is a big happy nostalgia ‘goof’ rather than a product crave? Nah…of course it is an important new trend regarding a prematurely shelved gustatory experience and I personally can’t wait until someone reintroduces Chuckles. Heck, I’ll eat three packs a day for at least ten or twenty years!
Nostalgia is huge. Candies, board games, toys like real wood Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, the reborn Mustang and VW Bug, and countless fashion items are in the mix.
We’ve already seen the sweep of bell-bottom jeans, the fedora hat, Converse All-Stars and vintage Nike & Adidas styles. Now striped suspenders worn with jeans and printed tees are on the rise. What’s next, knee-high striped tube socks and shorty short gym shorts? As for hair styles, EVERYTHING goes.
The curve may not be as long as the original for many of these resurgent flashbacks, but the consumer products life cycle has shortened as a whole.
We’ll likely never see vinyl albums and 8-tracks again, but for many items, the graying boomer market definitely creates a market for things fondly remembered.
This sort of thing is happening in multiple industries, not just candy. Discontinued flavors or scents are having a renaissance online. Although a certain product may not be publicly available, if there is enough interest they will make it available online.
Definitely. Nostalgia is proving to be big business in Candy. I see small candy shops spring up all over with brands that go back to the 1950s. What baby boomer wouldn’t want to take a chew once again of Bonamo Turkish Taffy?
Someone’s got to start marketing these brands again…a potentially lucrative segment of the market.
Nostalgia can be an effective marketing tool for brands that are associated with good times and memories. Look at the extensive use of ’60s music to market products to baby boomers today.
However, this doesn’t necessarily translate to a real sustainable product benefit or positioning. Once the nostalgia has been leveraged to reintroduce the brand, it still has to compete with the alternatives.
Cadbury would do well to market Whispa as a Limited Edition candy. That way, they could tap into the nostalgia but recognize that it will probably have a short life cycle.
Sure! This is the long tail–which is now whipping the back end of CPG. And why not? The pattern of demand shifts when product availability becomes a given. It is up to industry to respond to this new, flat demand “curve;” or lose the sale.
From time to time, a product or brand from the past can be reborn. There are several firms that adopt spin-off brands, buying the unwanted brand names from larger companies that can’t be bothered with lower-volume items. The issue for any new or old brand owner: will reviving the item result in enough volume to make it profitable? If the marketing cost is low, because a dedicated group of folks using the internet spread the word, that can help. It’s similar to the stories about dedicate fans agitating for their favorite about-to-be-canceled TV shows. Whether Cadbury brings back Wispa or not, would the sales volume add even 1 cent per share to the profits of the firm?