Overview Of The Marmite Food Company: Rejuvenating A Century-Old Brand

THE BIG SQUEEZE

"Rejuvenating a Century-Old Brand"

MARMITE

IB Business & Mgmt P6
Thursday, 6 November 2014 Marmite Food Company is a British company, which now forms part of Unilever, conceived in 1902 when it opened its first small factory in Burton-on-Trent, where it can still be found today. After a couple of years, where the recipe was perfected, it finally started gaining popularity around England. It is now a black, sticky food paste, which has a strong and extremely salty flavor. Even though it is mostly consumed in England, it is also found in many other countries around the world. There is even a modified version in New Zealand, produced by the Sanitarium Health Food Company. In the film, The Big Squeeze, we see
how Unilever decides to apply different extension strategies to extend the life span of Marmite by putting it back in the spotlight in order to regain its popularity. The final goal is to double sales. Marmite was starting to loose popularity and fall to the sidelines.
This sparked new activity within the company and led to the creation of different extension strategies that would want to keep their loyal costumers happy, but also modify it to acquire new customers. One of the problems they detected was that most customers are unhappy with the classic jar, since half of the marmite got stuck in it. In order to do this, they decide to change its appearance, format and packaging, always taking into account it being economical, and came up with a new container, which makes it much easier, practical and efficient to keep marmite in. Another technique they use is developing a wider product range. They come up with new products such as Marmite cheddar cheese or marmite cookies. And finally, to support these changes they start a new marketing campaign, which will help Marmite get back in the market
strongly. They give great importance to the new look the packaging was going to have. They use different methods for ideas, such as surveys and letters to consumers asking for feedback and ideas on possible new container and packages. The final product they come up with is a plastic container that can squeeze marmite out. They run into some initial problems, such as squeezing marmite taking too much effort due to its thick texture and the need of a new production plant. This led to the modernization of the entire process in the factory. The idea was to renovate the whole process of the production of marmite, making it faster, cheaper and cleaner, by using new technologies. They wanted to at least double production, since their goal is to double sales and supply must meet the demand. This would require a £2 million investment and delay factory production for 36 hours while installing the new machinery. The responsibility fell entirely on the engineer, putting him under lots of pressure due to the possible loss of production. In the fitting of the machinery there was a setback, when they realized the machinery didn 't fit, pushing everything behind schedule. But in the end, it got solved, even though it had meant a huge loss of time. They had another setback, when the new pipe work fails the test of the inspector, which led to more loss of time and money, almost £150 thousand. Once the factory was set, all efforts where directed towards the new design of the container. They now needed a new logo for it, and decided to go with the classic marmite logo, since it still needed to be recognized as marmite. Once this was ready, they went on with market research on the efficiency of the container. They decided the best way to qualify it as easy to use, was by testing if a baby could squeeze it. They also carry on more scientific questionnaires on the consumers. Once the product was finalized, it was presented to the director who liked the idea and its appearance, but claimed that the valve was too messy. This led to more months of research on the different valves and studies on consumers and their opinions. They finally came up with one that was less economical, but avoided mess. The product was finally approved by the director. The next step was to launch a campaign that would announce the new product and bring the attention back to marmite.
This is vital in the marketing and success of any product, and can mean a strong or weak launch. They came up with the genius love/hate campaign, which slogan was "You either love it, or hate it", managed to draw the attention of the public, and determined the final success of the product. It was advertised everywhere: TV, buses, shopping carts, etc. And used story boards to get the idea across to the client. The ad 's had different stories, which they chose through consumer feedback, but the one which had most success was of a woman breastfeeding, since it showed a progressive view. It got rejected by the BACC, who claimed it was "in bad taste", and meant another setback for the team since they had to start again, and find a new story line. They then came up with two new ideas. The first one was drawing with marmite, which could now be done thanks to the squeeze bottles, celebrities and people that the public loved and hated. The other idea was to make the classic jar look bad, and hard to use, in order to make squeeze look good. Both ideas where simple, but really powerful, and had a lot of success around England, reaching their goal of raising marmite 's
popularity. In conclusion, the company managed to apply the different extension strategies to extend the life product, by raising its popularity. The product was finally introduced and was ready to launch next year.

Works Cited
· http://www.unilever.co.uk/brands-in-action/detail/Marmite/293688/

· http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2010/apr/22/marmite-journalism-mind-your-language

· http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-13541148

· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite#Manufacture

· http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/30/marmite-love-it-hate-it-pr