Nutella: accidental brand or cult sensation?

A Twitter conversation last night instigated by Olivier Blanchard and carried on ad nauseum elsewhere, sales reminded me of a long-time guilty pleasure: Nutella. Just typing the word makes me salivate – and I have to restrain myself from running upstairs to slather some of that rich hazelnutty goodness on melba toast. And apparently I’m not alone: in additon to Twitter fetishists, Nutella has 3.5 million fans on Facebook.

French Vs German Nutella

So why all the nuts?

Hagelslag
Dutch Hagelslag: The chocolate-on-bread option I grew up with.

I didn’t grow up with Nutella. As a Dutch-Canadian kid, if we wanted chocolate on bread, by golly, we just put chocolate on bread. “Hagelslag” (pronounce the g as if you are lightly hacking up a small furball) or “chocolate hail” or just “sprinkles” were always available at my Oma’s house. My first Nutella purchase came as a student, when my room-mate had to have it in the house, and I in turn have had my own jar on the shelf ever since. And now, although we don’t let the kids have it (far too precious), my pregnant wife is currently making sure we stay stocked up.

But I wasn’t conscious of where it comes from (Italy), or its fascinating history, which Wikipedia has done a much better job of than I could manage in a blog post. Basically, it comes from a war-time innovation by Pietro Ferrero to produce a cheaper alternative to chocolate using cocoa and the hazelnuts that were plentiful in that region. Nutella in its present form emerged in 1964, with 179,000 tons produced in Italy every year.

Building a fan base

But I can’t remember seing an ad for Nutella, and can’t recall a single in-store promotion or Point-of Purchase display. It was always just there on the shelf alongside the Peanut Butter, calling “Dennis! DEEEENNNNISS!”. <more saliva> But I digress.

Apparently Ferrero does do some advertising – particularly in Europe, as in this nicely toned French ad that promises that Nutella will give you the energy of a child. But according to this site, Ferrerro USA only spent $300,000 on advertising in 2008.

It’s interesting that the positioning is built around “energy” and “youthfulness” rather than being explicitly “healthy”. In Canada, Nutella labels feature a boy kicking a soccer ball to highlight their support for amateur soccer, while in Italy, the connection with futbol was made even clearer in one commemorative package (right).Soccer jar

But in the UK, the “energy” positioning has gotten Nutella into hot water as misleading for a product that contains so much sugar and fat (thanks to @kaitli for the tip!).

The secret to Nutella’s long term success seems to be consistency, living up to the promise by just being there, and by the affectionate devotion of its fans who carry a craving for that taste well into their adult lives. And not just consumption, but even geeky fixation.

Just do a quick YouTube search on Nutella, and you’ll find hundreds of fans geeking out on all aspects of the product. Check out this clip from a German television show that compares the consistency of French Nutella with German Nutella in agonizing (and entertaining) detail. But note that when they actually call Ferrero in this clip, the brand-er doesn’t do much to help the geeks in question with their free advertising.

So the question for you DIFFER brand geeks: what should Ferrero be doing to capitalize on all these nuts who obviously want to help them spread the love? Social Media campaigns? More traditional media advertising? Just staying out of the way? Looking for your comments as always.

Pizza Hut drops the pizza… again

Beg to Differ notices that Pizza Hut – the iconic American sit-down-fast-food restaurant and purveyors of pizza pies around the world – have been tinkering with their brand again. And the result? Sorry guys. This one’s been in the oven way too long. That smell could be your brand equity burning.

pizza_hut_before_after__full

(image above from the blog Brand New)

“The Hut” branding – half baked or over-done?

Well here we are one short year after the silly and risky-to-brand-trust-levels publicity stunt pretending to rebrand in the UK under the name “Pasta Hut”, ( mixed reaction here from Brand Republic TheHut_200x267Magazine) then revealing that was just a way of drawing attention to their non-pizza offerings (tee hee). But it seems the Hut-people are at it again, in the USA this time. And what do you know? They found another way to drop the pizza (in all senses of the term).

Their glorious Big Idea:

On their new chain-wide pizza boxes and on a growing number of stores, Pizza Hut is introducing an alternate logo and name: “The Hut”, which for the moment is intended to co-exist with the Pizza Hut brand.

The rationale? Here’s what “the Hut” has to say:

And yes, we’re also introducing another vocabulary word with Pizza Hut, which is’The Hut.’ That ties in nicely with (today’s) texting generation. We wanted to make sure that Pizza Hut and ‘The Hut’ become common vernacular for our brand. Pizza Hut CMO Brian Niccol in BrandWeek

Ah, got it. Trying to create “common vernacular” – a term which incidentally, is also a big hit with “today’s texting generation.”

Now I’m not sure what Jabba & co. make of this – or if the idea actually came from the SpaceBalls character “Pizza the Hut“, but I’m thinking it’s a really bad idea. It’s one thing to try to introduce a new nick-name (and this one isn’t totally implausible). But it’s quite another to spring the nickname on people in such a way that you create brand confusion and cause people to question your commitment to core product.

And I’m not alone:

It’s a mystery to me why just a year after the whole Pasta Hut rebrand the company would now start a whole new renaming mission by introducing The Hut. Having spent 12 months being either Pizza Hut or Pasta Hut, the business seems to be testing out a third name. Wed, 17 Jun 2009 | By Ruth Mortimer | Marketing Week UK

My take: My recommendation would be to start slow and go organic. Use “The Hut” in a tagline. As in: “Pizza Hut – Get Pizza and More at the Hut”. Then IF IT STICKS start using it more and more until eventually you can claim a name change about by popular demand.

More reaction (from abroad):

Jabba Reacts - med2

Thanks to Brand New for the tip-off and design blog idsgn for analysis and the before / after image above.

Am I being too harsh? Comment away!

Garlic kings & pretty things – don’t laugh, they sell Shawarma

garlicking horiz

It’s hard to believe that a niche product category like Shawarma would become the subject of a heated competition for the affection, pharmacy eyeballs, prescription and garlic-craving tastebuds of a city. But in my home town of Ottawa, there must be gold in them-there-pitas.

A few years back, authour Daniel Pink came to Ottawa lead a seminar. At the time, he was just an average former-White-House-speechwriter-flogging-a-soon-to-be-Bestseller (Free
Agent Nation
– a great read), and not yet not a revered member of North America’s business publishing elite. And he was hungry. So after the presentation, a few of the locals and I
took Mr. Pink out for a late-night bite to eat at Maroush Shawarma on Elgin Street.

Now Maroush isn’t your average, tame ethnic fast food outlet. Maroush has its own theme music – a raucous Lebanese pop song – and a devoted following of late-night partygoers who tend to dance on the countertops (strongly encouraged by the owner).

This led to a discussion of how a brand in a crowded, highly competetive market can distinguish itself – even if it involves in-your-face (and occasionally really tacky) gimmicks.The Garlic King in the St. Patrick's Day Parade - yes you read that right. The finest in Lebanese-Irish cuisine.

The Garlic King is another example. Here’s a photo of his specially tricked-out van which seems to appear everywhere there is a crowd. This photo is from Ottawa’s St.  Patrick’s Day parade. Lebanese-Irish cuisine anyone?

Scoff all you want. These kinds of “Honest Ed’s” brands end up becoming landmarks in the local scene. Why? Because they DIFFER.

So ask yourself: can you do better? How are you going to DIFFER in your market?

BONUS: if you have 5 minutes and 49 seconds, this amateur documentary isn’t a bad introduction to the Ottawa Shawarma scene:

A modest proposal for General Motors and the new boss

So with all the kerfuffle around the GM bankruptcy (and the gajillions of dollars we’ll all be shelling out to save its butt from the fire), troche the one thing that gets forgotten as always is the brand strategy angle: 60-90 days from now, GM will be re-emerging from bankruptcy under a new coporate banner. Now, that could be a simple mechanical switch, but we at Brandvelope started thinking: what if the new boss has something to say about that?

View more presentations or Upload your own.

Trouble viewing the deck? Try this link instead:

https://www.begtodiffer.com/LADYLIBERTYMEETSGM

Some thoughts on differentiation from a great consumer brand guru

And when I say “consumer” I mean “consumer”. But unlike the objects of our host’s consumption, advice this way of thinking should never be a “sometimes food” for smart differs.

But the big question is: which of these plates are you going to buy?