Chocolate Busters: The Easy Way to Kick It!. Jason Vale

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СКАЧАТЬ look similar. Jack Dowed was Hershey’s marketing man at the time and there is just no way that he or anyone at Hershey could have envisaged just what a coup getting the ET gig was. Nothing like that had ever been done before and although the thought seems crazy now, at the time it was a massive $ lm risk. Bear in mind that Dowed made the deal without seeing a script or an image of the alien, and with the knowledge that although Spielberg had been successful with films such as Duel and Jaws, his previous film 1941 starring John Belushi completely bombed. However, according to Dowed himself it turned out, ‘The biggest marketing coup in history’. With such emotional triggers proclaiming that Reese’s Pieces were ‘ET’s favourite sweet’ being plastered everywhere, and with cinemas all over the country putting the product in prime buying spots in their display cabinets, sales shot through the roof. Distributors reported as much as a tenfold increase during the 14-day film launch.

      THE ULTIMATE CHOCOLATE RAPPER

      Mars may have missed out there, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they struck lucky as the biggest-selling rap artist of all time adopted the street name of one of their bestselling chocolates – M&Ms. Now you may think I’ve made a huge mistake here and that it’s not M&M but Eminem. In fact, when this incredible rapper started out his name really was M&M. The cost to Mars for this association – sweet nothing!

      IT’S ALL ‘OK’ IT SEEMS

      Because good product placement has the power to reap such incredible financial rewards, it appears the chocolate companies will stop at nothing to get a shot of some celebrity eating their product into a magazine or newspaper. A few years ago OK magazine paid Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey an undisclosed six-figure sum for the exclusive wedding picture rights. It is something which Anthea Turner now deeply regrets, and for a very good reason. As part of the ‘exclusive’ deal, OK was to sell-on just one photo of the happy day to the UK daily newspapers. Unfortunately for them, the photograph OK chose to sell to the newspapers was one of the couple eating a chocolate bar. The magazine thought it was more than OK to have a deal with Cadbury. Their job was to make sure they got a good picture of Anthea and Grant eating one of Cadbury’s new chocolate bars named ‘Snowflake’. They managed to get their prize picture by persuading Anthea and Grant – at the end of a long day – to pose for one last ‘tongue-in-cheek’ photo.

      Despite what so many people think, the truth is that neither Anthea nor Grant was paid a penny by Cadbury and the deal was all OK’s doing. Not only did it ruin what should have been happy memories of a special day, but it also lost Anthea her job as a television presenter after the slagging off she got in the press, thus causing her to fall out of favour with the ‘we love Anthea’ British public. Never mind, though – OK got their picture and Cadbury was laughing all the way to the bank with one of the biggest product placement scoops in recent British history.

      KIND ‘ER’ NO SURPRISE REALLY

      I think it’s fair to say then that when it comes to marketing, the chocolate big guns will do just about anything to help sell their wares, and in an industry not renowned for its scruples, it’s no surprise that their main marketing focus seems to be aimed at those whose brains are most susceptible to the emotional hook – children! Unlike the tobacco companies, who at least had to pretend they weren’t targeting kids (although that’s hard to believe when you see Joe Camel), the chocolate industry can do it with impunity.

      Research carried out by the Foods Standards Agency found a direct link between overweight children and TV advertising. This may be pretty obvious to you and me, especially when you think that food is by far the most commonly advertised product category and given the four ‘food’ products dominating this advertising are ‘soft’ drinks, pre-sugared cereals, confectionery snacks (including chocolate) and fast-foods, but the FDA needed a full study to see what was happening. As of October 2003 the top two food products advertised to children were for chocolate, the number one spot being held by Kinder chocolate – a brand which makes the extremely popular children’s ‘Kinder Surprise’ chocolate egg. The Kinder Surprise Egg, in terms of marketing to children, is quite ingenious. Young children love surprises and they love toys. The people at Kinder managed to link the intense feelings of anticipation and pleasure with chocolate in one easy hit. This kind ‘er’ direct advertising aimed at children is bad enough, but not only do mass-market chocolate companies use ‘fun’ and ‘happiness’ as an emotional pull to lure children in and put toys in chocolate eggs, they also deliberately place their products at the height of the average ten-year-old, and link chocolate to feel-good films and Disney characters, and make sure their bars are on sale in all major children’s theme parks, and, and, and … Be under no illusion that whenever you see chocolate, crisp, sweet or fast-food companies raising money to promote ‘Books for Schools’ or ‘Get Active’ or such like, that they are doing your kids a favour, the main reason why chocolate companies sponsor schools is:

      THEY WANT THEM AS LIFELONG CUSTOMERS!

      

      To achieve this not only will they have posters up in schools and sometimes provide ‘free’ football strips for the kids with their product plastered all over it (how kind!), but also they often arrange ‘exclusive contacts’ to put chocolate vending machines in the schools. That way the good feeling of ‘having a break’ from class gets linked to a chocolate bar. This message is then reinforced as the children go through life with several Derren Brown moments, such as ‘Have A Break, Have A Kit Kat’, and in no time at all a strong relationship with the product has been established.

      WHAT A BUNCH OF WONKERS!

      There are even supervised school trips to places such as Cadbury World and Chocolate World. I wish I was kidding, but we actually pay for children to get ‘educated’ about the history of chocolate at this modern-day Willy Wonka fantasy land. This would be fine as the history of anything can be quite educational, but what we are actually paying for is Cadbury’s advertising and emotional hook. The whole tour is one huge marketing ploy aimed at children.

      As soon as you enter the make-believe chocolate world everyone is given a couple of ‘free’ Cadbury chocolate bars and halfway round you get another two. On top of that there are plenty of ‘free’ chocolate ‘shots’ throughout the journey. As you continue along the 2–3 hour tour, advert after advert is being beamed into your conscious and subconscious mind – there is even an ‘advert’ stop. This is a place where you can sit and view on large screen, with superb sound effects, the many Cadbury ads that have been shown throughout the decades. One ad which particularly caught my attention was an old Cadbury’s Buttons ad. The picture showed a young mother feeding a child, probably less than one-year old, a Button. Such is the power of conditioning, this may seem perfectly OK in your eyes, but by the time you reach the end of this book you will see just how outrageous it is. The Cadbury World tour also has a kiddie’s ride taking you on a playful journey through ‘Cadabra’ – a chocolate wonderland – in a ‘beanmobile’. On this journey there is an automatic photomaker (similar to the rides at Alton Towers) on which, as you stare at the camera, a caption reads, instead of ‘Say Cheese’, ‘More Chocolate Please’.

      The tour is littered with mind-control Derren Brown moments like this and it naturally ends with you arriving at the largest Cadbury chocolate shop in the world! Cadbury World estimated it would have 250,000 visitors during the first 12 months from opening in August 1991 – the actual figure was 400,000! That’s nearly half a million people in a country of only 60 million. Chocolate World in the US saw a massive 2 million visitors in 1996 with each child receiving at least one free bar of chocolate on their tour. As you now know, it’s all about the lifetime value of the customer and the Willy Wonka world of recruiting new punters remains СКАЧАТЬ