An experiment in “un-branding” to promote community health

Beg to Differ noticed this morning that Australia is planning to ban all logos and distinctive design elements from cigarette packaging. The point: to make them less attractive to smokers. The question: will it work?

Generic packaging

According to the UK Daily Mail, quoting the Australian newspaper:

The new laws, to be introduced in January 2012, will prohibit the use of tobacco industry logos, colours, brand imagery or promotional text on the packets. Brand names and product names will have to be displayed in a standard colour, font style and position under the new laws, says the paper.

And why? Here’s what one Australian researcher says:

Documents show that, especially in the context of tighter restrictions on conventional avenues for tobacco marketing, tobacco companies view cigarette packaging as an integral component of marketing strategy and a vehicle for (a) creating significant in-store presence at the point of purchase, and (b) communicating brand image. Market testing results indicate that such imagery is so strong as to influence smoker’s taste ratings of the same cigarettes when packaged differently. (2002 research review by Australian Anti-Cancer Council)

That’s all true. But is there any evidence that removing visible branding will reduce the sales of cigarettes?

Those of us in the branding industry would like to think so. After all, we tell clients all the time that consistently applying and reinforcing your brand elements (logos, names, messages, design motifs) over time will increase your sales. So shouldn’t the opposite be true?

I hope so – and not just as a branding guy, but as a human being who seen friends and family members struggle with cancer.

But don’t forget about filters!

On cigarettes, these don't work. But on your BRAIN?

We’re not talking about cigarette filters – although, ironically, the fact that they don’t work is one of the issues at play here. It’s HUMAN filters that are the biggest reason this effort may not perform as advertised.

“Filter Factors” to consider:

• The habit filter: physical addiction is powerful stuff.
• The social filter: but smoking is more than just a commercial or health phenomenon; it’s a cultural – or more to the point – counter cultural act. The more you crack down, the “cooler” it becomes in hard-core smoking circles.
• The neuromarketing filter: Roger Dooley discusses in this fascinating Neuromarketing blog post how a giant cancer warning on a box actually becomes an ad for smoking over time!
• The brand filter: the name is still a brand – and if that’s the only differentiator on the box, that’s what consumers will look for / form relationships with.
• The “quest” filter: by making something hard to get or find, you can actually increase people’s desire for it, or at least the “tribal” cachet of having it. The Gold Visa or the Costco card in your wallet are great examples. Why do you pay for them? Because you have to.

So what do you think?

Is “un-branding” a socially undesirable product a good way to discourage people from using it? We want to hear from you!

“I’m a slightly mad aristocrat and I’m okay with that”

In this Beg to Differ: a shocking personal revelation from the Big Differ, who wonders if “Personal Branding” is too narrow to capture the range of authentic, but playful, roles we play in our professional lives.

Yes, that's DenVan as the Captain of the Pinafore with Meredith Matthews as Buttercup in Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore at Centrepointe Theatre (Savoy Society of Ottawa).

Confession: I’m leading a double life

Yes it’s true. By day, I am indeed the mild mannered head of my brand strategy consulting company and the less-than-faithful blogger whose words you are reading right now (among other things).

By night, I am a slightly mad member of the British aristocracy – and I’m okay with that. I’m a Lord, a commander of troops, master of the Tower of London.  I oversee torture, beheadings, and a castle-full of sopranos. I find wives for dying men, support jesters on unicycles, drag rivers, and make sure Beefeaters stay off the bottle.

And that’s just this month. In the past decade, I’ve been a Japanese Lord High Executioner, the Prince of Darkness, the Captain of a warship,and a young Pirate apprentice.

Tough jobs all – and difficult to sum up on a resume.

Multiple personalities? Nope. Just one big ham.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m either a) delusional, b) addicted to role-playing video games, or c) an amateur actor and singer. Although my wife might wish for an “all of the above” option, the answer is c).

Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to land some fun roles with a couple of great local musical theatre and operetta companies. And on April 21, I’ll be hitting the stage again with a small lead in Yeomen of the Guard (see the promo video below for details).

It’s fun; it challenges me; I get to make an audience laugh (hopefully).

And in this role, I will try to be true to the character I am playing – to the playwright and director’s vision, to my fellow actors, to the audience.

But is “actor” my “personal brand”?

Um, kind of? It’s a role I sometimes play that lets me play other roles.

Yesterday, in a Twitter chat, the topic of “personal branding” came up again. And as always, somebody threw out the line that “personal brands need to be authentic!”

But if you accept that there can be such a thing as a “personal brand” (which I don’t) this idea of ”authenticity” comes to mean the same thing as “personal integrity” which implies “you must always play the same role, because your brand is who you are”.

A brand is not a person, and it’s not personal

This is true for corporate brands, professional reputations, and it’s true for the roles we play in everyday life. Being an “authentic” dad is very different from being an “authentic” consultant, or being honest as an actor.

In Social Media we play many roles depending on the app we’re in or the nature of the conversation. Even within this blog, I’ve played different roles: advisor , critic,  jilted lover, and poet. And I’d like to think I was authentic in every case.

In the corporate and product realm, one company can support many brands with different “authentic” personalities. Procter & Gamble can “be” Mr. Clean, Dolce & Gabbana, and Pampers to different customers – as long as each brand is “authentic” within its own brand role and, most importantly, within the expectations they build for each customer.

The play’s the thing

• A brand is a role you play for a group of customers.
• “Play” is an important word here – branding is a game with rules, boundaries, and expected codes of behaviour, so yes, play with integrity and consistency.
• But once you’ve established those boundaries, there’s incredible latitude for growth and creative movement.
• When you’re on the field, be true to the game. But learn to keep the game on the field.
• In your professional life, keep your “brand(s)” at arm’s-length from your “self”. Your customers will be happier, and you’ll be more helpful.

So what do you think?

The true job of “packaging” (hint: it’s not just to wrap stuff)

Beg to Differ is focusing on a great blog post today by Seth Godin which asks a question we all need to ask ourselves: “does your packaging do its job”? But of course when Beg to Differ (and Seth)  thinks about “packaging” we don’t mean a disposable wrapper…

Image (uncredited) from sethgodin.typepad.com

Mmm. The Land of Chocolate.

Okay, I don’t always agree with Seth. Actually I almost never agree with him when he talks about product naming (Squidoo?!?) or brand architecture (Apple’s  iMac / iPod / iPhone convention sloppy?!?). But today he’s dead on in his assessment of the packaging for the chocolate product above, from the company Madécasse (pronounced mah – DAY – cas).

Now, you may look at it and say to yourself: hey! That’s not bad. It’s actually really well designed. And you’d be right: it’s a simple, elegant design that looks like craft-made – and probably expensive – chocolate. And again. You’d be right. You’d also be right if you noticed the effective use of repeated elements across the packaging, the solid little icon, and the nice differentiating touch of the little ribbon tied at the top.

You might also guess that this is fair trade chocolate. And again, you are a smart reader.

All very nice. All very professional. Yay.

So what’s wrong with a nicely-designed package?

Nothing wrong. That is, there’s nothing wrong *if* the design also helps customers to find you quickly in a store full of high end chocolate bars – which is where these bars would be most  likely to be sitting.

Nothing wrong. If your attractive design doesn’t actually act like camouflage – hiding you from their eyes.

Nothing wrong. If your design doesn’t also hide the fact that your product has a very different story (Madagascar chocolate! Made in Africa by Africans!) that could create an emotional bond – if only people could see through the wrapper to you.

Nothing wrong. If you listen to Seth for a moment:

I don’t think the job of packaging is to please your boss. I think you must please the retailer, but most of all, attract and delight and sell to the browsing, uncommitted new customer. – Seth Godin

How about you?

When you think about all the “packaging” around your product, service, or person-brand, are you just following the “nice design” conventions? If so, your package may be actually hiding you from your customers.

Instead, think about how the outer packaging acts as a transparent window to the really important differentiators that for the heart and soul of your product.

Or in Seth’s words:

And like Seth did, I’ll end by wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day. Why not celebrate by sharing a fair trade chocolate bar with someone you love? Even if it’s not well-packaged and clearly differentiated (yet), it’ll make you feel great!

Apparently iPad has been enhancing feature sets for a while….

So of course, Beg to Differ was riveted on Wednesday by “The Big Speech”. No, not the State of the Union Address: it was the unveiling of a new product by Apple that had our attention. And apparently, we weren’t the only ones watching: so were trademark lawyers for several other “iPads”. But will any of it matter for Apple? Read on.

Trying to pad the feminine market?

On Wednesday, our big question was not “what will this miraculous new product be?” Everybody knew that already. It was leaked long ago that it would be a tablet device that would look something like a big iPod or iPhone.

We were watching to see what they would call it.

The “i” naming convention was a given with iMac, iTunes, etc. But would this one become iSlate? iTablet? iShtar? Surely not <gasp> “iPad”?

Nope, iPad it was

The Fujitsu iPad product

Now, we’re fans of Apple branding in almost every possible way, and we lauded the return of Steve Jobs in a previous post. But instantly upon the announcement, we watched the media and the Twitter universe light up with criticism, and some really off-colour humour, about the name sounding like a feminine hygiene product (see the MadTV clip at bottom).

Even more shocking: it turns out that the hygiene connection was just the beginning. Neither the name itself, or the association with products aimed at females, were unique.

Fujitsu has already filed suit based on its own iPad product (above), and several others are out there.

But the one that jumped out at us was the “iPad” product sold by a small Canadian company called Coconut Grove Pads Inc.. It’s a bra insert like the one shown at the top of this post.

But will any of this matter?

In a word: no.

Let’s be clear: I would never advise a smaller client to go with such a name. There are just too many risk factors, as the media have been gleefully pointing out.

But Apple knows this. And they went ahead in spite of it because, well, they’re Apple. Their market awareness is just too big, and the new product just too smart, for any of this to matter.

They will settle with Fujitsu after some posturing by both parties, the Twitter wags will get their “Maxi” giggles, and the bra company will get its moment in the sun.

But most importantly, the name “iPad” will quickly lose its association with MaxiPads and other feminine products.

Why? Because we will all take ownership of the name as the way to refer to the Apple device – which will push all other uses to the back of the collective consumer brain bus.

And in the branding game, that’s what really matters.

What do you think? Are we artificially inflating our opinion? Let us know in the comments!

Bonus: MadTV scooped Apple on the iPad name in Nov. 2007

NOTE: This is very funny – but mildly gynecological humour might be a bit “edgy” for more conservative work environments, so view with caution.

Part 3 of our series on our favourite posts of 2009″

October and November held a few more pleasant surprises for us here at Beg to Differ – from our Chicken Sandwich series to our first Slideshare cross-over hit, to  a Seussian Twitter phenomena, we continue to be surprised by the enthuisiastic response of our readers – but almosrt never in ways we expect.

What if restaurants charged like creative agencies? The other side

The branding business: we haven’t have a lot of posts about this topic area… yet. But we felt we needed to respond to a viral video which lampooned clients for not “getting” the value of the work creative agencies do. After all, it takes two to tango – or quibble over a giant invoice.

More on the biz: when branding, look outside;

How to name a chicken sandwich: thoughts for branders

Brand naming: When KFC launched a new chicken sandwich with a name developed by Brandvelope, we took the opportunity to toot our own horn a bit and talk about the process of naming a brand. And the results: our biggest single day tally of visitors as branders came by for a taste of what we do.

More on names:Sorry Shakespeare: names matter;  brandscape – a chicken or egg?

American Airlines meets Mr. X – a tragic tale of brand failure

“Whole brand” thinking: This short post on the failure of a giant corporation to understand  effective customer engagement in the social media era marked the first time a SlideShare deck  of ours reached 2000 hits – and climbing (in response to a tip from  Alison Gresik).

More on this:Toronto Web site fail; Human in five steps; the perils of too much choice; one immutable law

Green eggs & spam: a Twitter poem

Social media: Funny to talk about this one as a greatest hit – because we wrote it in the middle of the current “faves” series – and it’s really still going with more than 100 RTs to date. Basically, we wondered a) what @SamEyeEm would be like on Twitter, and b) what Dr. Seuss might think about the new “ReTweet” feature on Twitter.

More on this topic: Twiterloo; branding explained in Twitterese; “Social Media” needs a new name.

More in this series:

• Tuesday: Beg to Differ highlights from June & July
• Wednesday: Beg to Differ highlights from August & September.
• Thursday: Beg to Differ highlights from October & November (this post).

Oh, and another reminder: please sign up for e-mail updates (on the right) or our RSS feed, so you keep track of our future posts.

Company makes dough on the Den while another eats it.

Beg to Differ is going to focus on a beauty and the beast story of two hometown brands that showed up on Dragon’s Den last night, with very different results. One plucky little company made a pile of money from investors, while the other – a much larger organization – wasted a pile of dough. Want to find out more? Of course you do. Read on.

The Beauty: spreading the dough on the Dragon’s Den

Beg to Differ knows that our non-Canadian readers probably won’t be familiar with the Canadian version of this reality TV show where real life entrepreneurs compete to get funding from real-life millionaire business moguls. But it’s a great show, the guest entrepreneurs range from brilliant to insane to just cheesy, and it really helps average viewers get into the entrepreneurial process.

Last night, one of the big winners was the product “Yummy Dough” pitched by Stefan Kaczmarek from Germany and Tim Kimber from Ottawa (who owes me a few pairs of new shoes because my three year old loves his other product PlasmaCar so much).

You can watch episode 5 here and the Yummy Dough product is first up.

If you’re like me, you probably hear “edible” and “modeling dough” and you first think of the PlayDoh most of us grew up with, then you think “YUCK!” Then if you have young kids like I do, you probably also think “I don’t want my kids to eat their PlayDoh!”  But this is pliable cookie dough that you can bake into cookies.

Check out the Yummy Dough site. It tells its story in a fun and compelling way (but make sure you quickly mute the annoying and slightly creepy background noises). One quick positioning note for the owners now that they have some marketing dollars: they need to steer away from the word “clay” and focus more on the “make your own cookies” aspect. It needs to seem like equal parts toy and food product – which will take some careful work.

The Beast: dumping dough on the Dragon’s Den

But another Ottawa-based “brand” is wasting money as fast as Yummy Dough is making it  - probably faster.

Take a look at the screen shot (above) from the Web site, and in particular the sponsor logos in the upper right. You’ll probably recognize the Cadillac insignia. You may be curious about the “Ivey” brand – which is the University of Western Ontario’s school of business (note to Ivey – great name, but negotiate a short tag under your logo with the words “School of Business”).

But unless you’ve directly done business with them or have a family member working for them, you probably won’t know what the letters “E.D.C.” stand for – even if you are Canadian. Yet, EDC has been pumping truckloads of money into season after season of the Dragon’s Den to build brand awareness!

So who the heck is EDC?

Some Hints:

1. Don’t look for it to be spelled out for you anywhere on the Dragon’s Den page. It’s just EDC in the video ads, side banners, and sponsor logos.
2. I’ll give you the “C” – it’s Canada, and yes, this organization is run by the Canadian Government.
3. It is often confused with two other corporations that do similar things and also go by TLAs (Three Letter Abbreviations): BDC and CCC.
4. See if you can find them on this Wikipedia “EDC May Refer to… “ page. And I’ll give you a bigger hint, it’s the 20th EDC on a list of 25 things that call themselves EDC.

Still stumped?

Well, if you’re not baffled, call your brother who works at EDC and tell him what a bang-up branding job they’re doing. If you are, you’ve helped me make a point I’ve made many times here on Beg to Differ:

An abbreviation is not a brand!

Read my July Op Ed from the Citizen with the message "NOMO" useless acronyms!

(Oh, and if you’re still wondering, it’s actually “Export Development Canada” and they do important work – as do BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada) and CCC (Canadian Commercial Corporation). Shame that none of them have real brands…)

Part 2 of the Chicken Sandwich series on product names

Yesterday,  in “how to name a chicken sandwich“, Beg to Differ talked about the first steps in the process of naming the new Big Fresh chicken sandwich from KFC in Canada. Today, we tackle another big question we often get asked: why worry about names at all? After all, didn’t Shakespeare say “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”? Sorry Shakespeare, we beg to differ.

The Immortal Bard and the Late Great Chicken-Slinger. Which one was the better brander?

Badly named roses stink

Apologies to the Immortal Bard. I’m a long-time drama geek, so to be fair, it’s not Shakespeare himself speaking; Juliet is moping about her little Capulet /  Montague conundrum. And as you know it all ends pretty badly for Juliet, so Shakespeare himself shows us that names really do matter – and can actually kill you if you ignore their power.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

My response: lady, if the name stinks, no one will ever get close enough to find out!“

It doesn’t matter if you have the best “rose” or product in the world, customers can’t learn to love you if they can’t find, understand, or remember you – all of which are the functions of a good name.

Even worse, if the rose is called “Thornflower”, “Smell-Bloom”, or “Red Floral Plant Number 2349293″, it actually won’t smell as good to customers! Your name is almost always the first thing your customer will learn about you. Great brand names “set the table” for customer perceptions of your product.

“Setting the table” for KFC

Which brings me back to my KFC Big Fresh chicken sandwich. We could have just called it “Chicken Sandwich” and been done with it. And indeed for another restaurant, such a descriptive name would be exactly the right name to help customers figure out where the product fits in the “menu” (the brand architecture).

But because the new sandwich had to stand out as a star in a line-up of other products, we needed a name that balanced a bit of descriptiveness with the right amount of character – or, to use terms the Bard used: to capture the attention of the “groundlings” (hold the focus of the audience) but “do not saw the air too muchwith your hand thus, but use all gently” (that is, don’t overact and upstage your other products).

A good name should do (at least) two things

The art of naming is to get inside the mind of a customer. Your name needs to start the conversation on the right foot to show them how your product will do two things:

1) Meet their needs & satisfy their expectations

Your name (and all other brand elements) has to show that you are part of the product universe they know and understand. Customers are always looking for safety first, and names that are too far beyond the realm of the expected are going to miss the mark. That’s not to say you can’t be innovative, creative, or stretch the bounds of their understanding. So “Apple” as a name for a company can work. But remember, even Apple used to be called “Apple Computers” until the connection became effortless.

2) Excite them at the same time

Comfortable doesn’t sell without some excitement as well. The trick is to meet their expectations and then take them somewhere new. Show them aspects of your products that are new / different / interesting / worth talking about to colleagues, friends, or bosses.

That’s a lot to ask of a name. And you may be wondering how all of this applies to the KFC Big Fresh. Well, we’ll explain all that tomorrow. In the meantime, here are a few more…

Thoughts for branders:

• Is your company a Juliet (and possibly heading for a tragic end), or are you aware of the critical importance of getting names right?
• Are you stuck with marketing a badly named rose?
• Can you change the name, or re-arrange your product architecture?
• If not, are you at least aware of the limitations that your current names impose on you, and are you trying to help customers understand more clearly?

The Chicken Sandwich Series

1. How to name a chicken sandwich: thoughts for branders
2. Sorry Shakespeare: names matter – in roses and chicken sandwiches (this post)
3. The right kind of name: a chicken sandwich story (coming soon)
4. The tasting: what I learned as a customer (coming soon)

Part one of a series on product naming.

So, after months of waiting, the baby is finally here. No, I don’t mean my actual baby – my wife and I are still waiting for the arrival of our third little bundle at the end of November. I’m talking about the new chicken sandwich Brandvelope named for KFC in Canada – which appeared in stores on Friday. Beg to Differ often gets asked what goes into such a process, so as a public service, here are a few insights for brand managers from the Kentucky Fried trenches.

The Colonel calls

When Priszm (the company that manages the KFC brand in Canada for Yum! Brands) called Brandvelope this summer to ask for help naming the new sandwich, they already had a great product in development. The concept of the new sandwich had been pretty much nailed down after several cycles of focus group testing, refinement, and more testing.

We learned that they were launching this new product to be a “hero” – or “flagship” of their line of sandwiches. And we learned that focus group subjects loved the sandwich, but they didn’t love any of the names that had been tested.

Our job: find the right name for the new sandwich.

The sandwich concept:

1. The chicken: fresh, skinless chicken breast fillets breaded in-store with the Colonel’s 11 herbs & spices, then fried on-demand for customers.
2. The extras: fresh lettuce, a sesame seed bun, and peppercorn mayo.
3. The packaging: the product is the only KFC sandwich served in a box, giving it a premium, high-value appeal.

The concept sounded like a winner to us (as a matter of fact, the early concept photos had our mouths watering). But what do you call such a thing?

There are two basic ways to approach naming.

The wrong way: creative first; strategy last.

This is the most common approach to naming. Sit in a room and brainstorm until you come up with the most creative, crazy, or compelling name you can think of, then run with it. This approach can be loads of fun, and usually leads to names that work great for the brainstormers, but not for customers.

The right way: strategy first; then get creative

This is our approach: take some time to understand the context that the new product will be launched into, the “brandscape” around it, and most importantly, what the name is supposed to do. Then and only then do you move to the creative part.

A great name is never just a name; it’s a tool to help people find, understand, and remember products, services, and yes, chicken sandwiches.

What we needed to know before we started:

1. Intentions and strategic goals: what was the impetus behind the launch on the part of the people managing the brand?
2. Customer expecations: what did we know about the hang-ups and desires of the target audience?
3. The Brandscape: what competing products would the new product be compared to and how could we highlight the differences?
4. Brand architecture – how  would the new name complement and contrast the rest of the existing portfolio of products?
5. The unknowns: what additional information did we need, or at least, what were the areas where we’d have to make educated guesses?

The process from there:

So how did we get from these questions to the final name “Big Fresh Chicken Sandwich”?

Good question. We’ll get into more details in a series of blog posts over the next few days. But in the meantime, here are a few “take-aways” to think about.

Thoughts for branders:

• Does your company treat product (or corporate) naming as a creative process first, or do you start with customer-facing strategy?
• Can you answer all five of the areas we needed to adress for KFC above?
• Are you treating your products as individual entities or  as part of a bigger system that helps customers make decisions?
• Are you listening to people outside of your board room when you make such decisions? People who are willing to challenge you and your assumptions?

The Chicken Sandwich Series

1. How to name a chicken sandwich: thoughts for branders (this post)
2. Sorry Shakespeare: names matter – in roses and chicken sandwiches

Breakfast Cereal brands that didn’t stand the test of time

After yesterday’s post on Laser-Engraved Corn Flakes, Beg to Differ took a look at the Wikipedia list of breakfast cereals and noticed just how many of these cereals failed for one reason or another. Either they were meant to promote a short-lived movie, character, or cartoon, or given names that became liabilities for other reasons, or they were just hilariously bad ideas.

15 breakfast cereal brands we’ll never see again

1) Bill & Ted’s Excellent Cereal – Ralston (1989)

A short-lived cereal based on the equally short-lived Saturday morning cartoon of the late 1980s starring a pair of teenaged slackers – one of whom was a very young Keanu Reeves. Funny, he never made the cereal aisle again with subsequent movies. Perhaps  Dangerous Liaisons Crunch?  The Devil’s Advocate Loops? Matrix Flakes?

2) Baron von Redberry & Sir Grapefellow – General Mills (1972)

Interesting concept. These two characters were set up as mortal enemies – World War I flying aces in a dogfight for breakfast-table supremacy. They both spiraled down in flames, but you have to admire the effort.

3) C-3PO’s – Kellogg’s (1984)

This of course was a cereal based on the Star Wars character, C-3PO. I remember seeing this one on the supermarket shelf. Why the fussy, anally retentive protocol droid and not Leia Cinnamon Bun Crunch or Wookie Pops? Who can say.

Tag line: “A Crunchy New Force at Breakfast”

4) Cocoa Hoots - Kellogg’s (1972)

This cereal was described on the box a “sweetened chocolate flavored cereal – fortified with 8 essential vitamins”. Its mascot was named Newton The Owl.

But is it just me, or is there a striking resemblance to the logo of a certain chain of restaurants?

Coincidence? Probably.

5) Crazy Cow – General Mills (Late 1970s)

To me, this name is an odd duck – or perhaps a weird heifer? The idea is that it would turn your milk a “crazy” artificial pink colour. But as if that weren’t appetizing enough, I’m pretty sure after the Mad Cow scare of a few years back, this one won’t be making a comeback any time soon…

6) Dunkin’ Donuts Cereal – Ralston (1988)

The brand connection between the chain of adult focused coffee-and-donut stores and a kid-oriented breakfast cereal is a bit of a stretch. Particularly in 1988, when I would have expected this to taste like Styrofoam, day-old coffee, and cigarette ashes. Mmm.

Tag line: “Crunchy little donuts with a great big taste!” Two varieties: Glazed Style and Chocolate.

7) Flutie Flakes-General Mills (1998-2001)

Named for quarterback Doug Flutie, these ones actually lasted quite a while, and the cereal became an ironic pop-culture hit – with a box appearing in the background on Seinfeld for example.

Wikipedia also notes that Flutie Flakes became the subject of a minor controversy in January 1999 when after Doug blew a playoff game against the Dolphins, Miami Dolphins‘ head coach Jimmy Johnson poured Flutie Flakes on the ground and invited his team to stomp on them. This made Flutie very angry.

8 ) Freakies – Ralston (1972-1976)

Very elaborate product line and character universe, but a fairly sizable flop for Ralston’s first attempt at sugary breakfast cereal. But even today, you can order T-Shirts from this Freakies fan site: http://www.freakies.com/

9) Mr. T Cereal – Quaker Oats

As a famous man once said: I pity the fool that ridicules this cereal. So I’ll let another famous man introduce this cereal to you (and the other denizens of his demented playhouse).

Pee-Wee Herman eats Mr. T cereal

10) Mud & Bugs – Kellogg’s/Disney (2003-2006)

Mmmm. Tasty. I’m going to award this one the “Least Appetizing Name” award. Of course, it’s a promotional tie-in worked out with the Disney merchandising folks and meant to promote the launch of the Lion King franchise.

And yes, I can see the “gross-out-mom” appeal of “Mud & Bugs”. But even as a kid who loved grossing out mom, the name alone would inspire me to skip breakfast entirely.

11) Nickelodeon Green Slime Cereal – General Mills (2003)

Sorry, I take back the Least Appetizing Name award and give it to this You Can’t Do That on Television spin-off. Funny though, that this would have come after the lifespan of the show – with the golden era of You Can’t being the late 1980′s.

12) Nintendo Cereal System – Ralston/Nintendo – (1988-1989)

For a commercial product tie-in, the name and “System” concept are creative, different. We like that. Here’s how Wikipedia describes the “system”:

“The cereal box was divided in half. One side, called Super Mario Bros. Action Series, had fruity-flavoured Marios, Super Mushrooms,Goombas, Koopa Troopas, and Bowsers, and the other, called Zelda Adventure Series, had berry-flavored Links, hearts, boomerangs, keys, and shields.”

13) Punch Crunch – (Quaker Oats) (1970s)

Cap’n Crunch apparently had a few spin-0ffs, including this violent-sounding sidekick. The “Punch” refers to the fruit-punch-flavour of these cereal rings. The mascot was a hippopotamus named Harry in sailor duds, who actually does some villain crunching in the old commercial below.

Commercial for Punch Crunch:

14) Urkel-Os – Ralston (1991)

How did this kid ever get a cereal? Named for Steve Urkel – the supremely annoying fictional character on the ABC/CBS comedy sitcom Family Matters, portrayed by Jaleel White, this one was mercifully short-lived and now we have only the commercials on YouTube to remember how close we came to the end of civilization as we know it.

Commercial for Urkel O’s

15) Yummy Mummy – General Mills (1987-1992)

Funny, I’m married to one of these. But this cereal probably predated the wide use of the term for a nice-looking female with children. Also known as “Fruity Yummy Mummy”s, this cereal was part of the same cereal family as Count Chocula and Franken Berry.

From Mr. Breakfast.com: Yummy Mummy was a “fruit flavor frosted cereal with vanilla flavor marshmallows”. The yellow marshmallow pieces seemed to resemble the shape of a head. On some of the cereal boxes, they were referred to as “monster mallows”. The other cereal pieces were red and orange. They may have also been intended to resemble heads, but the primarily circular nuggets with two slits in the center looked more like colorful little pig snouts.

Kellogg’s pushes boundaries of food product branding

File this under weird but compelling: The Telegraph in the UK is reporting that Kellogg’s will be testing new laser-etched Corn Flakes in selected markets. It’s very hard to tell how serious this is, and without a clear press release or better imagery, Beg to Differ wonders if it’s even real. But it got us thinking…

Image sent out from a UK Kellogg's Twitter account to show new laser-etched corn flakes. Sorry, but this looks more like PhotoShop than Star Wars to me.

Branding problem / branding solution

From Wikipedia article on Corn Flakes

But when you think about it, the idea is actually very strong from a brand strategy perspective. Kellogg’s wants to help consumers distinguish between the “real / original” Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and all the other products called “corn flakes” that are so common around the world.

The branding problem here, of course, is a classic trademark case study. The name Kelloggs chose ,”Corn Flakes”, is about as plain and useful a name as you can imagine from a consumer perspective. But from a corporate perspective, Kellogg’s is now stuck with a name  which is not considered trademark-able in most countries because it is a purely descriptive phrase.  It would be like trying to trademark “apple pie”, “automobile”, or “battery”.

And if you look at the turn of the century ad to the right, you’ll see that this has been recognized as a problem since those first Toasted Corn Flakes were produced by accident by John Harvey Kellogg in a misguided attempt to quell sexual desires with dull food.

Notice the line:

“The original has this signature: W.K. Kellogg”

Later products like “Rice Krispies” were given much more distinctive names to fight this effect.

Burning it in

So really, if it works and isn’t a publicity stunt, this idea of imprinting the word “Kellogg’s” (which is trademarked) on the flakes is a smart way to show that the product in the bowl is different from all the others out there.
In essence, it’s no different from what Levi & Strauss did back in 1886 when they sewed the first branded leather patch on 501 jeans to scare away imitators.

We’ll see if this idea lasts as long.

The enemy: one of hundreds of other "Corn Flakes" out there.