2 minute read
Retail Randoms
by 55 North
The Marmite Effect
A word of warning: you’ll either love this story or hate it.
Unilever is in the news after announcing it will raise prices this year. This follows a 4% price hike from the multinational consumer goods company last year in the wake of rising raw material, transport and energy costs.
The thing is, only The Week In Retail (and Wikipedia) appears to refer to Unilever as a “multinational consumer goods company”. For some reason, the rest of the media insists on calling it
“Marmite maker Unilever”. This, despite it owning another 400-odd brands.
Why though? Is it because Marmite is perceived to provoke an almost visceral polarising response in people, in a way that Dove or Domestos don’t.
Journalists may be surprised to learn then that the nation’s love-hate relationship with the spread is not so binary. A Harper Adams University survey of 500 Brits found that almost half (47%) said they liked Marmite. Only a quarter (26%) didn’t.
The remaining 27% weren’t bothered either way. They were absolutely fuming about the cost of living though.
Fold on a minute
Here’s a little word association puzzle for you. What do the words “incomparably slim” and “elegant” bring to mind?
A supermodel? A classic ocean-going liner from the 1920s? A flagpole wearing a dinner jacket?
Here’s a clue: when folded it takes up hardly any space in the kitchen.
Of course, it’s a foldable food slicer. The icaro 5 food slicer to be precise.
Yet another product you didn’t know you needed, the icaro 5 is only 10cm wide when folded.
It’s been designed for all the people out there gagging to take every kind of food imaginable and “transform it into appetising slices” but don’t have room in their kitchen for a conventional slicer.
Such a feat of engineering prowess could only be accomplished by a German company, in this case Bavarian appliance maker Ritterwerk.
One imagines, in a fit of broad national stereotyping, that the icaro 5 makes short work of all the Bratwurst you can chuck at it.
But then, so would a sharp knife.
