Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being taken for a ride? I reckon most of Australia has been unwittingly been dragged into a brilliant marketing campaign by Kraft.
Aussies have loved Vegemite for years and so when Kraft created a new version of its thick, black, yeasty spread, people flocked to the shops to grab a jar. The push was made more effective by the fact that the new spread had no name and Kraft was asking the public to come up with a name.
Let’s face it, if you’re going to name a prodct you have to sample it and so thousands of Aussies were tasting the new spread and talking about it with friends and work colleaugues. Some liked it, others decided that the original was still the best. I reckon that meant that some Aussies who hadn’t bought a jar of the stuff for a while would be grabbing their old favourite from the supermarket shelves. Kraft still wins.
Finally the name for the new spread is announced …. iSnack 2.0. Interesting name but no one seemed to like it so Kraft said, “OK we’ll let people vote on the new name”. Finally a new new name has been announced …. Vegemite Cheesybite. Very unimaginative yet the whole saga has kept the new spread, and by association the old one, in the news for months.
Even if the new Vegemite Cheesybite fails to grab a reasonable market share, Kraft still wins. They’ve managed to get so much publicity out of this exercise that I’m sure it’ll boost sales of both products. While I know that they’ve spent megabucks on the whole campaign, they’ve also had so much free publicity from the whole affair that I reckon it’ll work out to be an extremely cost effective marketing ploy.
Oh … just for the record … I haven’t tried the new spread but with all the publicity I have actually started eating more plain old Vegemite. Mmmm.
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