Glass now half-full for Cadbury
Cadbury’s decision to add a glass-and-a-half of palm oil to its shrinking Dairy Milk chocolate blocks was, as everyone has seen, a big mistake. The brand suffered, sales dropped and competitors took the opportunity to stick the boot in.
But the company’s reaction to the brand crisis – admitting the mistake, apologising, pleading desperately for forgiveness and going back to old coc0a-butter recipe – was applauded.
Now Cadbury is continuing the charm offensive to mark the arrival of the old/new recipe on New Zealand shelves.
The Dairy Milk roadshow plans to visit more than 150 towns and give away one million free samples of orang-utan friendly chocky.
And, blow me down, it’s just in time for Christmas.
Sadly, Matthew Oldham, Cadbury New Zealand’s managing director, has another recipe controversy on his hands: Minties production has been moved from New Zealand to a sparkly new factory in Thailand and the purists are up in arms.
The sweet confections are now softer than usual and are lacking that powerful minty flavour the New Zealand populous seems to so desire. Oldham says there was no recipe change. It was just the taste of new machinery (and maybe a hint of lemongrass and fish sauce).
Thankfully, Cadbury has decided not to move the production of Pineapple Lumps off-shore for fear of violent reprisals across the nation.
StopPress is also trying to confirm horrible rumours surrounding a possible recipe change for Wattie’s tomato sauce.
Vincent Heeringa
November 20, 2009
Thank goodness. That tomato sauce is awful. I prefer Pams any day.
And as for the Baked Beans, oh, don't get me started.
Martin Bell
November 20, 2009
What!?! Pam's tomato sauce better than Watties? That, good sir, is an outrage. Squeezy bottles at dawn…
Su Yin Khoo
November 20, 2009
What happened to Beanman?
http://www.beanman.co.nz/game/
Duncan Stuart
November 20, 2009
A recent article in Fortune mag summed it all up. Cadbury set themselves an international stretch target to cut costs and by and alrge have succeeded in trimming their costs globally. But this is what happens when you let the CFOs run roughshod through a company that relies on brand values. What a disaster – and it was entirely prevantable. No doubt some financial office in London has earned a big bonus on the abck of all this mayhem. Cadbury NZ should just be glad they didn't get tarred by their usage of San Lu milk last year – another scandal that made top 3 news in the USA late last September when Cadbury had to recall product.
Jo
November 20, 2009
I still won't buy it, it's made is Aussie and there is a big taste difference in the Aussie mad chocolate compared to the choccy made in NZ
Duncan Stuart
November 20, 2009
…and I miss Snifters. They were yummy.
Wayne Attwell
November 20, 2009
When corporates let manufacturing make strategic marketing & brand decisions in the interest of the bottom line they must expect to kill the golden goose.
Not only have they let Whittaker's grab a chunk of their market share, but seem hellbent on destroying the rest of their brand portfolio.
I'd love to know the valuation that their brand names have on the balance sheet before and after the stuff-ups. I suspect they may lose more financial brand equity than what they save by moving manufacturing offshore, buggering up the recipes and losing faithful brand supporters.
Paul
November 24, 2009
Short term financial greed versus long term brand & company management. If they had reduced advertising to keep machinery up to date and more automated over the last 10 years. When it comes to food source who wants to trust others and just like Aussie ads who wants to reward Aussie sourced NZ icons?