furtherandfaster

Downsizing - you have been warned..

How to tackle the problem of rising food prices? Just make the product smaller. Cadburys is the latest food manufacturer to keep their customers by giving them less. False weights and measures? Of course not - the new weights will be shown on the pack. I bet they don't downsize the Cadburs gorilla into a chimpanzee - there might not be enough joy to go around. But if a company no longer gives you what you think you're buying I think that's a cheat. If the idea takes root that products physically swell in the good times and shrink in the bad while the prices stay level I think we'll wake up and notice. That we are being sold short. And there will be a superior brand positioning which says - our portions always stay the same.

From sense to sensibility - the new Cadburys ad

Coming on top of Saatchis mobile ad with the flash mob dancing in Liverpool Street station here we have more people watching set to a sound track for the new Cadburys Dairy Milk ad.  I resist the temptation to add my own soundtrack - the Eagles singing Easy Feeling but although we all love feeling good - isn't a succession of brands heading into the same peaceful easy feeling going to get a bit crowded after a while? All you have as a differentiator is an image of the particular execution as a mental key frame  - I'm not sure this is a brand building on a new higher plane or rather a short cut which can't be sustained.

There are real limits to sensibility. I don't mean that the marketer is confined to making rational statements but I am troubled by attempts to own (or rent) feelings as branded territory.