CASE STUDY Marmie / This article appeared in Contagous issue Twenty Two. Contagous is an intelligence resource for the global marketing communiy focusing on non-tradiional media and emergng technologes www.contagiousmagazine.com For more information please contac the team on +44 (0) 20 7575 1998 or sales@contagiousmagazine.com
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DIVIDE AND CONQUER
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case study / marmite / DIVIDE AND CONQUER / Marmite has been ‘The growing up spread you never grow out of’ and ‘My mate - Marmite’, but it’s as a ‘love/hate’ brand that this peculiarly British product has found true fame. Love for the 108 year-old brand, now owned by Unilever, has spawned countless fan sites, Facebook pages, secret societies and pop-up shops… and there are even places where haters can vent their feelings too. Lucy Aitken (Marmite-lover since childhood) asks how a small jar of yeast extract gets people so worked up /
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J
ust before Christmas 2009, Jon Morter shot into the limelight. Morter, a part-time DJ from Essex, launched a Facebook campaign to mobilise support for the 1992 Rage Against the Machine track Killing In The Name to take the Christmas number one spot in the UK singles charts. Why? He was bored with seeing each year’s X-Factor winner being a shoo-in for the coveted chart position. The Facebook group acquired nearly one million fans; the expletive-ridden Killing In The Name sold 502,000 downloads, successfully trumping X-Factor winner Joe McElderry’s The Climb. In the spirit of Christmas, Morter asked people to donate to Shelter when they downloaded the track and raised over £100,000 for the charity which helps the homeless. This not only showed the power of social networks and hailed as a victory by music fans fatigued by X-Factor founder Simon Cowell’s pop monopoly and ratingshungry TV stations, it also offered an opportunity for a bit of a battle, in this case a genuine David versus Goliath. Which begs the question: who doesn’t relish the chance to roll up their sleeves to defend what they love and complain about what they hate? The X-Factor / Rage division sparked debate in pubs, offices, playgrounds and online about which was preferable in the Christmas number one spot: saccharine talent-show pop or an angry protest song? By the same token, for every Chelsea FC or Real Madrid fan, there’s an ardent hater who feels just as passionately. And certain brands exploit how their loyalists feel about the competition. How much do Virgin Atlantic converts enjoy bleating about British Airways? And ask a room full of Mac evangelists about why they love their MacBook, and PC-hatred flares up in a nanosecond. It’s our love of taking sides that has helped Marmite’s long-running love/hate strategy succeed across many different platforms. For those unacquainted with Marmite, it’s a smooth, rich dark-brown paste with a consistency slightly thicker than honey that’s most commonly spread on toast. Laden with B-vitamins, it’s made from the yeast which is used to ferment sugars into alcohol during the brewing process. Marmite’s closest competitor is Kraft-owned Vegemite, another yeast extract, famous for being an Australian staple. Marmite is most prevalent in the UK where over half of the world’s yeast extract is consumed. Marmite has been around since 1902 and, along with 13 other food brands including Pot Noodle, Knorr and Hellmann’s, joined the Unilever portfolio in 2000 when the fmcg giant acquired Bestfoods for £13.4 billion. The love/hate strategy was introduced in 1996, when a Marmite brief fell into the hands of creative team Richard Flintham and Andy McLeod at DDB London (then BMP DDB). One of them loved it; the other hated it. The rest is history.
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‘Like Marmite’ UK readers will know just how much Marmite has entered the vernacular since then. A quick Google search on the words ‘I’m like Marmite’ shows that the late reality-TV star Jade Goody, British Olympic boxing champion James DeGale and former newspaper editor Piers Morgan have all compared themselves to Marmite, using it as short-hand for their polarising personalities. One celebrity news site, Anorak, even launched a ‘Marmite Watch’ to round up just how many times the phrase ‘like Marmite’ got used to describe everything from PayPal to the Ford Ka. The managing director of Chrysalis UK, the division of Unilever UK & Ireland which manages Pot Noodle, Marmite, Bovril and Peperami, Matt Burgess (lover) says: ‘Marmite gets about 10 mentions every day in the press, about half of those are in the national press.’ He adds: ‘Marmite is a jewel in Unilever’s crown. It’s an amazing product and we share learning from it across Unilever. It’s effectively a single-market brand so we can push the boundaries of what’s happening in the media space.’ The TV ad that first captured the essence of the love/hate strategy was ‘Apartment’ in 1999 where a passionate kiss ends abruptly with one smoocher disgusted by the taste of Marmite in his partner’s mouth. The executive creative director at DDB London, Jeremy Craigen (hater) reflects: ‘The strategy went a bit over the top in early executions and had people doing things like bathing in Marmite. To go out there and tell the world that some people hate our product felt quite daring. ‘Apartment’ was the third commercial, and that was the first really good piece of work.’ But the love/hate strategy has really been brought to life through digital media. In the last ten years, Marmite has made the most of new platforms to connect more deeply with consumers, bringing it to life in ways that were previously unimaginable. Back in the late 1970s, when Marmite ads meant apple-cheeked kids making mountains of Marmite on toast for mum on Mother’s Day, short of pinching a DeLorean with a flux capacitor, it would have been impossible to imagine the range of ways that this brand connects with its fan base today. Facebook love The hub of all Marmite’s digital activity is a Facebook group which boasts 256,724 fans. Some 200,000 of those fans were already on Facebook as self-declared Marmite lovers long before the official page was launched in 2008. And these are fans in the purest sense; fanatics. A contest to win a Marmite-themed tea at the Dorchester hotel in London attracted 1,459 posts, while there were 162 entries on a Facebook thread called ‘glass jar vs squeezy jar’ (more on that contentious issue later).
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As the Marmite Facebook community is so active, the social networking site is central to all communications. When Marmite supported its move into the £300m UK cereal bar market with a £1.5m marketing investment in February 2010, it was the first FMCG advertiser to use Facebook ad units which gave visitors the chance to sample the new product and offer their feedback. This supported videos, played on outdoor digital screens and online, showing reactions of people trying the cereal bar and either loving or hating it. Additional activity on Facebook, through AKQA London and Splendid Communications, asked the question ‘have we gone too far?’ And, in a deliciously Marmitey circle, this complemented print and outdoor advertising through DDB London which showed brand extensions such as Marmite shower gel. The copy read: ‘This may be too far, but how about this? ‘and then pictured the bar. Niki Hunter (a late convert, now a lover), associated director at Splendid, Marmite’s PR agency, says: ‘The fan page grew so quickly that Facebook actually called us to ask how it was growing so fast.’ What does the page do to keep people so engaged? Hunter reveals: ‘We give people stuff to pass on to their friends, constantly ask them questions and don’t use social media as just another channel to shove out ad messages. Social media works best when you ask people to get involved with your brand and share their thoughts and comments.’ Social media can also enable brands to reward their most vociferous fans and this was the thinking behind the launch of the Marmarati in November 2009. Launched through London-based social media agency We Are Social and Splendid Communications, this ‘secret society’ was formed to celebrate the launch of an extra-strong version of Marmite, code-named XO (extraold) and scheduled for launch in March 2010. First and foremost, the Marmarati enlisted the help of around 30 bloggers with whom the brand already had a relationship to help spread news of the society. Next up, those who sought to join had to prove their love by taking quizzes which they could share on Facebook and Twitter. They also had to upload a video, photo or a written submission for the chance to preview XO, with site visitors voting for the winner. Once enlisted, members could win a handmade jar, packaged in the Victorian style that the campaign adopted as a nod to Marmite’s heritage. The Marmarati also got to meet each other at a tasting event shrouded in mystery. However, even those who didn’t get to be part of this elite but who were still involved with the campaign were rewarded on some scale, with promotions and Marmitey merchandise. Managing partner at We Are Social, Nathan McDonald (definitely a lover) comments: ‘There were nearly 1,000
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entries and the next stage is sending out 200 jars of Marmite XO to get a reaction. Marmite has many fans and this particular product is for the most passionate. We peppered the main Facebook page with campaign updates and it attracted conversation via Twitter. It was a good balance between Facebook, Twitter, organic traffic and blogs.’ Marmite brand manager at Unilever, Tom Denyard (hater) says: ‘The Marmarati was about bringing these people into an inner circle, talking to them about new product development and involving them in the process. They have then given us feedback and we have tweaked the product accordingly. They’ve also shared messages with the broader community.’ As well as being visible on blogs and social networks, the Marmarati attracted a huge amount of enthusiasm from fans trying be enlisted into the secret society. Denyard reveals that there were 700 people clamouring at the doors, and the website attracted 21,000 visits in four weeks. Across social media, it’s estimated that the campaign touched around 650,000 people simply by engaging 30 key influencers.’ Denyard reflects: ‘With the Facebook fan page going from strength to strength and with the Marmarati experience to draw on, the world of social media plays well for the brand. Consumers want to talk about it and Marmite wants to be involved in those conversations, giving consumers access and insight, and taking their views on board.’ Influential love Marmarati was given a huge boost through the involvement of bloggers. Brand managers now try to engage bloggers more because they know they can influence attitudes and even purchase. But for many, identifying the right bloggers and establishing an appropriate tone and level of contact is challenging. Marmite values its relationships with bloggers so highly that on Valentine’s Day in 2009 it sent them bespoke love poems in a gift box containing limited edition Champagne-flavoured Marmite. Bloggers reproduced their personalised poems and their reactions; typical comments included Makiko Itoh’s post on her food blog JustHungry.com: ‘I feel even more warm towards Marmite now, if that’s possible.’ Denyard reflects: ‘It’s not rocket science to understand the needs of people you’re talking to and recognise what they’re looking for. Bloggers want to talk about good stuff. If you’re able to provide quality content for them in a format that works, they will pick it up and run with it. If you do it consistently over a period of time, you have a functional working relationship that works for both parties.’
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‘We gve people suf to pass on to their friends, consantly ask them quesions and don’t use social media as jus another channel to shove out ad messages’
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Pop-up love Bloggers also helped to get the word out about the Marmite pop-up shop that lived on London’s Regent Street for nine weeks at the end of 2009. Around 80,000 people visited the shop which offered Marmite merchandise from T-shirts to tableware, a café selling tea and Marmite on toast for £1 and art installations playing on the idea of love and hate. The co-founder of London-based brand venturing agency Hot Pickle and former Marmite marketing manager, Rupert Pick (lover), who was responsible for creating the pop-up store, comments: ‘People said things like “this is a religious experience” and travelled to see it. Reaction from haters was equally extreme, with some asking, “Why the hell have I been brought in here?”’ Around 2,000 people who ate in the café wanted to see a permanent Marmite store, suggesting scope for either a flagship standalone store or multiple pop-up shops. Marmite marketing executive, David Titman (‘I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than eat Marmite’) reflects: ‘The Marmite shop was an excuse to create a home for all our products and offered a chance to show how far we could stretch the brand.’ Love the limelight On the subject of brand-stretching, Marmite has introduced a stack of new products over the last few
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years, including rice cakes, breadsticks and breakfast bars, offering lovers more opportunities to consume the brand. It has also produced a swathe of special editions, including Marmite flavoured with Guinness to nudge young men to buy it, as well as a jar of Marston’s Pedigree Marmite shaped like a cricket ball during The Ashes series between England and Australia last year. In true Marmite style, this was accompanied by a Marmite vs Vegemite debate and a sponsored charity cricket anthem warbled by ex-England cricketer Phil Tufnell. Senior director, brand strategy at London brand consultancy Landor Associates, James Withey (‘I quite like it’) believes that strong brand-management has helped Marmite stave off the threat from own-label rivals to which other brands have fallen victim during the recession. He says: ‘It has never lost its clear communication and strong visual identity – it has an iconic bottle and label, and Marmite feels like it’s a specific thing; people know it’s yeast extract, but Marmite defines its own category.’
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Despite initial resistance to Squeezy – and you need only take a quick scroll down the Facebook thread on ‘glass jar vs Squeezy’ to get an idea of fans’ reaction to Marmite being cased in plastic, it has been a business success story. Commanding a 30% price premium, Squeezy now contributes 11% of Marmite’s total sales. Marmite contributes £50m to Unilever’s bottom line; gross sales are around £75m. How hate breeds love
Head of account management at Marmite’s ad agency DDB London, Jon Busk (Marmite-lover since childhood) says: ‘During this recession, we’ve seen people reaching out for brands that give them reassurance. Emotional attachment to the brand is so strong that people might give up a lot of other brands before Marmite.’
Agencies and brand managers on Marmite are under no illusions that converts are rare. Jon Busk observes: ‘There are some people out there who are never going to buy Marmite and there’s no point in coming up with some widget to try to entice them.’ Yet by emphasising the divisive nature of the product, the lovers have become more outspoken and brand-loyal. He adds: ‘We have deepened the relationship that lovers have with the brand and attracted waverers.’ James Withey
Love squeezy When Marmite launched its plastic Squeezy jar in 2006, it needed to keep the lovers on side. As families tend to be Marmite’s main target, it reached out to them with a nostalgic TV spot starring Paddington Bear swapping his famous marmalade sandwiches for Marmite ones. To explore that association online, digital agency AKQA in London created a virtual Paddington’s Kitchen where visitors could swap ideas for Marmite sandwiches. Over 1,225 recipes were submitted over five weeks. Additionally, a helpline was set up for mums making packed lunches offering sandwich suggestions. Running alongside this activity was a distinctive campaign online and in print, where users were encouraged to squeeze Marmite onto toast and share their efforts as part of an online gallery. AKQA also worked with Marmite, podcast site Audible and the UK government’s Reading For Life initiative by offering free audiobooks for kids. Mums (and offspring) could choose whether they wanted a Horrid Henry or Perfect Peter story depending, of course, on whether they were lovers or haters of the characters in Francesca Simon’s books.
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adds that the campaign makes people take a stance: ‘It encourages people to think about the brand in terms of love or hate and that’s the genius of the strategy: it helps people get off the fence.’ That’s why on Facebook, the I Hate Marmite group (4,053 members) – which includes colourful descriptions of how its members detest the stuff (typical content includes statements like ‘it’s the work of Lucifer’ or ‘I would rather eat a tramp’s toenail’) is far from ignored by Marmite’s agencies. Niki Hunter at Splendid says: ‘We talk to people there as well because hatred versus love always pushes the lovers to love it even more. We’d be crazy not to embrace those people.’ It takes huge amounts of courage to admit, accept and even make a virtue of the fact that there are an awful lot of people out there who hate your product. Not dislike or have no opinion on, but actively despise. And when brands show that they understand how they’re perceived, they instantly have a personality. Skoda famously pulled this off via a campaign through Fallon London a decade ago when it confronted head-on its negative brand image in the UK, resulting in a 1,500 strong waiting-list for Skoda vehicles for the first time in its brand history. DDB London’s Jeremy Craigen sums it up: ‘Like all great successful campaigns, Marmite’s is based on truth. I read [wine magazine] Decanter, and someone was referring to a wine being like Marmite and mocked up a label. When a brand is talked about in [UK tabloid newspaper] The Sun and also Decanter, you know you’ve hit something.’
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analyst’s insight / By Vicky McCrorie / Analyst / Datamonitor Marmite is a leading brand in the UK savoury spreads sector. The brand, owned by Unilever and dating back more than a century, achieves annual sales of around £75 million, benefiting from a loyal customer base and successful marketing campaigns. The spreads market in which Marmite operates is fairly fragmented. Indeed, while Marmite enjoys a market share of 4.7% in the overall spreads market (which includes sweet spreads), the brand leaders, Shippam’s and Robertson’s, hold only an approximate 6% share each. Private labels, meanwhile, account for a substantial 42.0% share of the market, highlighting the need for brands to maintain a high level of product innovation to encourage brand growth. Looking at the savoury spreads sector itself, a key problem is its relatively small growth rate. While the sector is the largest in the spreads market, at £211.8 million in 2008, it is forecast to achieve a compound annual growth rate of only 1.6% between 2009 and 2013. A key cause of this is perhaps the declining consumption of toast as a breakfast food; more people are eating breakfast on-the-go out of the home, or are choosing breakfast cereals instead of toast. Unilever has met this challenge by launching innovative new Marmite products, including what it described as the first savoury cereal bar, along with other Marmiteflavoured savoury snacks such as cashew nuts and crisps. Such products extend Marmite from a breakfast item to a snack food and could therefore encourage more consumers to purchase Marmite products, while keeping the brand high profile. Alongside this, Unilever maintained a high profile image for Marmite by running frequent marketing campaigns. Marmite’s advertising has been well received by consumers, with its Love it or Hate it campaign successfully reflecting the divided feelings people generally have for the product in a humorous manner. While in Britain there are significant numbers of people that like the brand, this is a different story abroad. Many people outside the UK cannot understand its appeal, and it has subsequently never sold well overseas. However, with sales remaining strong in the UK alone, Unilever need not worry about overseas expansion, and should be content to see Marmite maintain a healthy business in its home market. www.datamonitor.com
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Challenge / Marmite had been at the back of the cupboard and needed to move centre-stage. Its love/hate strategy was serving it well - the brand had enjoyed consistent value growth of 3% - but this came chiefly from reminding lapsed users to re-purchase or use it again. New revenue-generators needed to be a combination of product innovation as well as marketing efforts that engaged both lovers and haters / Solution / Marmite reinforced its love/ hate strategy in more conversational digital environments. Marmite’s Facebook fan page has over 250,000 fans, and tools to engage hardcore fans, such as secret society Marmarati, generate positive PR. It has built relationships with bloggers which amplify the brand message, and it is quick to react to events in the news. Its pop-up shop on London’s Regent Street brought the brand to life in a retail and café-style environment, and packaging innovation Squeezy now contributes 11% to overall sales on a 30% mark-up / Results / Marmite contributes £50m every year to Unilever’s bottom line. It is a category-defining product with such a clear, divisive strategy that ‘Marmite’ has become shorthand for things that polarise, from pop stars to PayPal. The ‘jewel in Unilever’s crown’, Marmite is experimental and pushes boundaries, and its experiences help to inform other Unilever brands. Going forwards, it could certainly explore exporting: its easily-translatable strategy could help it attract new fans overseas, as well new foes... but that’s all part of the fun /
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marmite / BRAND MAP /
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YEAST
PR
LOYAL
Pop-Up Shop
TOAST
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Unilever
Pop Culture
CAFÉ
Online Gallery
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£50m
LOVE / HATE
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256,000 Fans
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‘Like Marmite’
JEWEL
01 / Years & Yeast
02 / Vernacular & Visibility
03 / Giving & Groups
Marmite was born in 1902 and, along with 13 other food brands including Pot Noodle, Knorr and Hellmann’s, became a Unilever brand in 2000 when the FMCG giant acquired Bestfoods for £13.4bn. Marmite’s closest competitor is Kraftowned Vegemite, famous for being an Australian brand. Marmite is most prevalent in the UK where more than half of the world’s yeast extract is consumed. Laden with B-vitamins, it’s made from the yeast used to ferment sugars into alcohol during the brewing process. Marmite contributes £50m to Unilever’s annual bottom line. This may seem small compared to other Unilever brands like Flora margarine (£200m) but Marmite is a category-defining product. This gives it a status and a confidence rarely enjoyed in the FMCG sector. Its strong taste inspired the brand’s long-running love/hate marketing strategy. An infamous 1999 TVC showed a passionate kiss ending abruptly with the guy gagging on the taste of Marmite inside his partner’s mouth.
Converts to Marmite are rare. People either immediately love it or hate it. Since 1996, DDB’s marketing strategy has ingeniously exploited the product’s divisive nature, turning lovers into outspoken brand-loyalists. The campaign makes people get off the fence and take a stance. The ‘love it or hate it’ tag line has entered the UK vernacular. The phrase ‘like Marmite’ has become pop-culture shorthand to describe everything from PayPal to the Ford Ka. Controversial celebrities are quick to compare themselves to the polarising brand. Marmite generates an average 10 mentions every day in the British press, half of which are inside the national titles. The brand is a jewel in Unilever’s crown. Learnings from its marketing and retail activities are shared across the company.
Being a single-market brand means the advertiser can push media boundaries. Last year 80,000 people visited a Marmite pop-up shop on London’s Regent Street over a nine week period. The space offered Marmite merchandise from T-shirts to tableware, a café selling tea and Marmite on toast for £1 and art installations playing on the idea of love and hate. Running alongside this activity has been the distinctive ‘Marmart’ campaign which encouraged users to squeeze Marmite onto toast and share their efforts in an online gallery. The love/hate strategy is deployed to great effect across digital media. The hub is a Facebook group which boasts 257,000 fanatics. A contest to win a Marmite-themed tea at the Dorchester Hotel attracted 1,459 posts. To keep engagement levels high the brand ‘gives people stuff they can pass onto their friends, constantly asks them questions and doesn’t use social media as just another channel to shove out ad messages.’
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BLOGS
Secret Society
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Tasting Event
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Love Poems
04 / Marmarati & Merchandise
05 / Champagne & Consistency
06 / Alliances & Attachment
UK social media agency We Are Social and Splendid Communications launched ‘Marmarati’ (a ‘secret society’) in November 2009 to seed the March 2010 launch of an extra-strong version of Marmite, code-named XO [extra-old]. First, the Marmarati enlisted 30 key bloggers to spread news of the society. Next, those seeking to join had to prove their love by taking quizzes shared on Facebook and Twitter. Applicants had to upload a video, photo or written submission for the chance to preview XO with site visitors voting for the winner. Members could win a handmade jar, packaged in the Victorian style the campaign had adopted as a nod to Marmite’s heritage. The Marmarati also got to meet each other at a secret tasting event, with those outside of the ‘inner circle’ rewarded with Marmitey merchandise. The Marmarati involved consumers directly in new product development, providing Unilever with valuable feedback . By engaging 30 ‘key influencers’, the social media campaign touched 650,000 people.
The impact of bloggers on the success of the Marmarati campaign shows the importance that Marmite brand managers attach to social media. Much energy goes into engaging with this community because of its influence on consumer attitudes and purchase intent. Identifying the right bloggers and establishing an appropriate tone and level of contact is a challenge that Marmite’s marketers seem to enjoy. On Valentine’s Day, loyal bloggers were sent bespoke love poems in a gift box containing limited edition Champagneflavoured Marmite. Typical comments included Makiko Itoh’s post on her food blog JustHungry.com ‘I feel even more warm towards Marmite now, if that’s possible.’ Marmite brand manager Tom Denyard says: ‘Bloggers want to talk about good stuff. If you’re able to provide quality content for them in a format that works, they will pick it up and run with it. If you do it consistently over a period of time, you have a functional working relationship that works for both parties.’
Brand-stretch has taken Marmite into extensions like rice cakes, breadsticks and breakfast bars. Marmite also has an eye for clever brand alliances, producing numerous special editions including Guinness flavour (to attract young men) and a jar of Marston’s Pedigree Marmite shaped like a cricket ball during The Ashes cricket series of 2009. Commanding a 30% price premium, Marmite’s alternative plastic ‘Squeezy’ jar now contributes 11% of total sales. Diversification has helped Marmite stave off the threat from own-label rivals to which other brands have fallen victim during the recession. The brand has never lost its clear communication. With its iconic bottle and label, Marmite possesses a unique, established feel and therefore defines its own category. In recessionary times, people tend to reach out for brands that give them reassurance. This is where the strong emotional attachment that the brand’s marketing has built amongst consumers starts to pay real dividends.
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