I am fascinated by Kraft’s attempts to find a name for their new Vegemite variant in Australia. The trouble is that time, distance, and possibly corporate pride are making it tough to get an answer to the fundamental question: How on earth did the new version of the iconic Vegemite brand end up with the name iSnack 2.0? But one thing is for sure—that name is history now.
For those not familiar with Vegemite, it is a savory spread, similar to the British brand Marmite. Vegemite is most often used on toast and in sandwiches, often with cheese or other ingredients. When the product was first introduced in 1923, a competition was held to choose the name. Today the brand is truly embedded in Australian culture. The 2009 Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) study, conducted by George Patterson Y&R, placed Vegemite as the third strongest of 1200 brands, after Google and Nokia. (Click here to read the story on WARC.)
Since people do eat Vegemite with cheese, it made sense for Kraft to introduce a new version of Vegemite blended with cream cheese. (Click here for story.) What makes less sense to me is how they ended up dubbing the new product iSnack 2.0. I do know that the new product was originally launched as Vegemite No Name, and Kraft asked Australians to suggest names for it. I also know that Kraft received over 40,000 suggestions. What I don’t know is how iSnack 2.0 was actually selected.
Was it randomly drawn out of the 40,000? (This would make some sense because back in 1923, the original Vegemite name was selected out of a hat following a nationwide competition.) Or, as the following comment by Kraft spokesman Simon Talbot suggests, was it chosen by the marketing team?
The name Vegemite iSnack2.0 was chosen based on its personal call to action, relevance to snacking and clear identification of a new and different Vegemite to the original. We believe these three components completely encapsulate the new brand.
Mmm…to me, that smacks of the same thinking that ends up trying to convey five key messages in a 30-second commercial.
Anyway, whatever the selection process, the name iSnack2.0 was doomed to a short life. After the name was announced on September 26, the overwhelming reaction (click here for a sample) on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook was negative.
To give credit where credit is due, Kraft did listen to the feedback and within three days announced that they would change the name. This time they held a poll to identify the new name and offered up some of the most popular suggestions from the initial submissions. I note that the poll was conducted both online and by phone, presumably to get a more representative cross-section of Aussies. The winner was Vegemite Cheesybite. (Click here to read Kraft’s announcement online.)
However the iSnack 2.0 name was selected, it leaves me wondering whether this debacle has helped or hurt the brand. On the one hand, several bloggers and tweeters have argued that the publicity will give the brand a welcome boost. But on the other hand, could all that publicity undermine the brand’s authenticity and connection with Australian culture? When you introduce new things that are not in keeping with what people expect of a brand, I would argue that you risk undermining the brand’s authenticity. Associations with technology are simply not seen to be appropriate to Vegemite, and the brand’s authenticity may suffer as a result.
That’s my take. What’s yours? Oh, and if anyone out there knows how the iSnack 2.0 name was selected, I would love to hear it.
(3 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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November 4th, 2009 at 8:55 am
my view is that this is just a clever marketing stunt. how else do you get people to feel charged up over a spread that is already so familiar with majority of the population? imagine if they had called it New Vegemite or even Vegemite Cheesybite in the first place, would not hv entered the consciousness of most people simply because it sounded “right”.
by stirring up debate and publicity, Kraft made people realise that they DO CARE about the name of their favourite spread, enough to feel indignant if it was called something else. it was the same as Coke which by changing the drink’s taste and name, made people realise how important the original Coke was to them.
i dont think Vegemite would suffer as people’s anger or dismay is directed more at Kraft. in fact, they should feel all the more protective over the brand now it is ‘freed’ from the horrible label with renewed passion. the New Coke incident proved that.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I’m ‘fascinated’ with it, too …
A month ago I was talking to a friend - and he told me about it and I thought he was putting me on with the name iSnack 2.0. Then I started to follow the story. The NYT has a piece about it:
http://tinyurl.com/ylog7gv
I doubt that it was a PR stunt. Too convoluted, too uncontrollable. Kraft blew it.
The last line in the NYT piece says it all:
“Ultimately, you don’t want people thinking too much about your brand, you want people to become habitual about it.”
November 5th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Originally, I agreed with Nigel. Showing a disregard for your brand’s heritage and disconnection with your consumers, didn’t strike me as a particularly prudent stragetgy. However, the more I think about it and the more I cringe at the name, the more I think this is a marketing stunt. Logically I can see how a name like isnack 2.0 (hurts me to type it) can in this case revitalise the very essence of the brand it destroys. I also agree with YeeMei on the anger being directed at Kraft/the “Maker” and ultimately one effect of a threat is to solidify the threatened. So while we may not see spectacular sales for Vegemite Cheesybite we may see the Vegemite core brand come off the back of the shelf to the front. As a caveat to this strategy though, I would say this is perhaps exclusively possible for certain iconic brands like vegemite. Vegemite defines Australia and that is a key dynamic to the potential success of this strategy.
Am I giving the Kraft Marketing team too much credit? One thing I’m certainly not sure of is Simon Talbot’s role in all this and why he said what he said. It’s a bit of a detective story…
November 5th, 2009 at 5:50 am
Thanks for the comments everyone.
YeeMei I take your point about reminding people how much they care about this brand. If so, I have to agree with Chris that it is a risky strategy. But maybe you do need to do something like this once in a while to really reset the hook with people who buy the brand.
Chuck, while I agree with your point about habitual purchasing maybe Kraft had evidence that simply reinforcing existing behavior was not doing enough for them?
November 10th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
This kind of reminds me of New Coke. I always thought that New Coke was a planned failure to get people to fall in love with Classic Coke. I wonder if brands purposely try to fail in order to later succeed. It’s wild speculation because they could never cop to it. If people later found out they purposely failed instead of authentically failed it would create a backlash.