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…

For many people (both young & old) at the moment Saturday & Sunday night is X-Factor time. Undoubtedly the latest series has been phenomenally successful but what interests me is that the programme has huge appeal with young kids aged 7-11.

Whilst the show was not created with kids as its primary audience it has ‘unwittingly’ managed to tap into the core motivators of primary school children on so many levels. Of course music as a genre continues to hold a strong allure for ‘tweens’ as they gravitate away from cartoon characters and towards the aspirational youth culture. But X-Factor is so much more than just a music entertainment programme – it’s about living the dream and fundamentally mirrors the wannabe nature of tweens in their unbridled belief that they too can be rich and famous.

The interplay between the ‘good & evil’ judges coupled with the boos & hisses of the audience has a strong pantomime quality to it encouraging kids emotional (& sometimes physical) involvement. And then there’s the contestants; heart-throbs such as Lloyd and Joe captivates the girls whilst the comedic antics of John & Edward have kept the boys amused.

The voting system also meets desired tween empowerment providing that ever elusive sense of ‘control’ and the contest overall epitomizes the natural competitive spirit of boys in particular.

The final piece of the jigsaw is that X-Factor is naturally inclusive and allows kids to get involved as both a family viewing experience and as subsequent playground banter. This gives kids a true sense of belonging and a conversation currency that allows peer group acceptability.

Funnily enough Dreamworks acknowledged the appeal of the show when they created ‘Far Away Idol’ as an extra for the Shrek2 DVD in which the characters had a sing off and even Simon Cowell made an animated cameo appearance!

Like so many things that tweens ‘adopt’, X-Factor might not be regarded as a kids programme per se but it certainly fulfils all of their needs states. Perhaps it’s a salutary sense check to marketers of kid’s brands to reflect on whether their own brands have that ‘X-Factor’ quality.