In honour of Ned’s now legendary Quotations Quotient I am delighted to continue his weekly quotable column on our blog. 

The power of quotations is that they cause us to pause; they challenge, question or confirm the way we think by using eloquence and brevity as their tools.  Quotations summarise a whole way of thinking in just a few words and are often inspiring as a result.  Successful marketing is similar in its success: it communicates a clear message in a memorable and sometimes interrupting way.

I hope that this section continues to inspire and interrupt your weekly thoughts…it seemed right that this week’s theme begins with “change.”

• “There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction” (Winston Churchill)
• “Change is inevitable – except from a vending machine” (Robert C. Gallagher)
• “If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” (Mary Engelbreit)
• “Thought has been constantly evolving and we can’t say when that system began” (David Bohm)
• “The art of progress is to conserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order” (Alfred North Whitehead)

Borrowed with pride from all over the place.

Warburtons have just announced that they are due to launch two separate sub-brands in an assault on the savoury snack category. It makes intutitive sense for Warburtons to extend the brand in this way and will no doubt build a strong base of incremental sales to its core bakery product portfolio.

The typical snacker profile tends to be much younger than the supermarket shopper profile and this is reflected in how Warburtons have crafted the snack propositions and their sub-brand expressions. Whilst the Warburtons parent brand remains as an umbrella endorsement, the two brands ‘ChippidyDooDaa’ and ‘Snackadoodle’ are both prominently used as the primary on pack branding and the tonality of the pack design combined with the flavours appear to have been created to appeal to a young adult (male) audience.

As part of the mix, they have also developed brand characters for each which are highly visible on pack and this looks to be an interesting move given that such characters are usually deployed in this way to appeal to young children (especially so within this category). Warburtons do not explicitly mention ‘kids’ as one of the core target audiences in the launch announcement although I would predict that the characters will indeed prompt interest with tweens and teens. Furthermore, their potential popularity will be strengthend with this ‘aspirational’ audience largely because of the absence of any other kids branding cues.

Despite this potential interest from tweens and teens however, the presence of the characters may work against the success of the snack products in that they may serve to limit interest amongst older adults (who may be existing brand loyalists) or else risk overall confusion as they sit alongside the core Warburtons brand…

Is it April 1st  already? On hearing about Warburton’s latest innovation I must admit I had to check my calender.

So what is the next big thing from the UK’s number one bakery brand – well it’s unsliced wrapped bread of course.

And according to the website “Talking Retail” it is not as odd as it might sound:

“The new loaves are available in 600g Tiger White and 600g Tiger Brown and will enable retailers to take advantage of the popularity of in store bakery products whilst driving additional sales. The range will offer consumers delicious products with that just-baked taste, but with longer lasting freshness”