It seems "Jaffa" has lost all meaning

Jaffa Cakes were called Jaffa Cakes because the jelly bit was orange flavoured. The name has been stretched for a while, with all sorts of fruity flavours available. 

But McVities have now taken it a step further by dispensing with fruit as the flavouring altogether. Instead, their latest special edition Jaffa Cakes are "cola bottle" flavour. 

There is an unusual marketing tactic on the side of the box - basically daring you to prove you are brave enough to eat them.

The cola bottle saying "Sweeet!" sums up the flavour. They are very sweet with a slight cola flavour which did taste like cola bottle sweets. The jelly is brown like cola bottle sweets too. 

The "serving suggestion" is a mystery. It looks like cola bottle sweets floating in blood.

I remember when Jaffanatics were called Jaffaholics. McVities even used to advertise a Jaffaholics Anonymous phone line. I called them up once and they sent me some free toys called Tangs - they had 'koosh' bodies and funny faces.

Jaffanatics sounds better to me than Jaffaholics. It's important we don't over-medicalise this sort of thing. 

Toys R Us R Back (sort of)

Toys R Us went bust a few years ago now - so long ago the former store was used as a mass vaccination centre (Jabs R Us) during the pandemic. 

But now it's back, resurrected by WH Smith and relaunched with a flurry of branding.

It had a clearly demarcated section in the branch of WH Smith where I first saw the Toys R Us sign.

And the company has gone all in on the branding, bringing Geoffrey the giraffe back to life in a variety of toys and other merch.

I appreciate how WH Smith have leaned into the branding, including this timeline of former iterations of Geoffrey that ends with him arriving in WH Smiths. 

This feels like more than the reappearance of a 'zombie brand'. There's been some investment in the launch.

And in the store where I first saw the Toys R Us comeback, there was even a photo opportunity with Geoffrey.

He looked rather relaxed about his return.

Snack of the month - cola pop...corn?

I tried this snack last month, before Christmas. But it's still on sale in B&M if you want to try a bag yourself.

There is a trend now for stretching confectionery brands across other products to take advantage of brand recognition and customer loyalty. Chupa Chups isn't a brand I'd have thought would have a high amount of either but the manufacturer obviously thought differently. 

The popcorn had a decent crunch with the cola flavouring adding a thin sugary coating to it. 

It tasted like cola bottle sweets rather than a fizzy syrupy drink. I thought it had quite a pleasant taste although the high sugar content means I probably won't buy it again.

December 2021 - End of month review

This is my final monthly round up for 2021 and my final blog post for the year, taking me up to an annual total of 92 posts.

December for us is dominated by Christmas. We wrote about 120 Christmas cards. Cathy took a picture of me posting a load of them outside our local post office, where the postbox has been decorated by someone with excellent crocheting skills!

There will be a series of posts in January about the 2021 Annual Christmas Card Audit. As cards have arrived, it's been fun seeing who has been trying to get a mention in the ACCA this year!

On the first weekend in December we put up the Christmas tree and decorations. (You can see some of them here.) We also had five advent calendars this year. Last year we didn't bother with the Lego Star Wars one, but this year we did, mainly to get the Christmassy version of the Child star of The Mandalorian, Grogu.

Life has gone on inbetween all the Christmassy stuff. I had an appointment to go and get my booster jab. This time it was in Splott instead of the big centre in the old Toys R Us building. 

There were signs up when I went in saying they were offering the Moderna vaccination, but the leaflet used the brand name, Spikevax. I asked the lady doing the jabs why they weren't using the brand name and was told "because it sounds like something you'd make up!" Technically, all brand names are 'made up', I suppose, but I know what she meant. It's a really silly sounding brand name.

Being boosterised means I should be protected against the omicron variant of the Sar-Cov2 coronavirus. However, as we have been seeing people, we have been doing lateral flow tests to make sure we haven't picked it up anywhere. It occurred to me as I binned yet another baggie of used tests and swabs that there is going to be a 'covid layer' in the landfill sites excavated by future archeologists that will help them accurately date the rubbish they are sifting through.

I had an early surprise present off Cathy when she bought me a box of Captain Crunch cereal. It's the proper American stuff complete with neon bits and that wonderful artificial "fruit" scent that comes with it.

At the start of Christmas week, the Welsh Government announced a ban on spectators at sporting events. The FAW responded by putting football on hiatus until January. At that point, I had only been to one game in December, because of other commitments and Barry Town having to postpone a game. However, that one game, which was between Caerau Ely and Cardiff Draconians, was a landmark game on my Futbology App. 

I was in work right up to Christmas Eve, then Cathy and I had a quiet Christmas Day. Two days later we went up to Shrewsbury and had some days with family before heading home to ring in the New Year. While in Shrewsbury I went to a football match at the Meadow for the first time since March 2020. It was an evening game that ended in a 0-0 draw, but it was so good to be back there! Here is a photo of the team warming up.

I haven't been to many evening games at the Meadow. It always feels a bit special. That was my final game of the year, giving me the following totals on Futbology.

This also doubles as a summary of my season so far as I didn't see any games before July. I'm quite pleased that I've been to a dozen new grounds. 

On the way home from Shrewsbury we stopped and called in at the Hereford Model Centre. I bought myself a present with some Christmas money. This will be the subject of at least one future blog post!

And if the thought of reading about Dungeon Bowl in the New Year doesn't fill you with excitement, then how about this reminder of the next holy holiday that I spotted in a Co-op in Shrewsbury?

That's right! Easter is on its way....

Delightful branding

I look at marketing materials that get pushed through my door, as I carry them to the recycling bin. This gem of a product name from a takeaway pizza leaflet made me chuckle.

"Sausage Delight" sounds a bit saucy to me. (Dirty minds and all that.) 

Neuromarketing - how advertisers could use our brains against us

This is a chunk of an essay I wrote for my MSc. in the module I think has been most interesting so far: External Communications. I previously posted some nuggets from research papers about TV adverts. This is a bit more in-depth. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

A neuroscientist, plotting

In addition to the insights gleaned from cognitive and social psychology, many marketing experts are monitoring the emerging field of neuroscience, the study of physical changes in the brain that underlie thought processes, such as problem-solving, decision-making and recalling memories. Neuroscience proposes “these mechanisms must be rooted in brain function” (Standage and Trappenberg, 2012, p.235). Although electroencephalography has been used to study the effect of marketing materials on the brain since the 1970s, it is the growth in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) procedures that has enabled neuroscience, ‘neuroeconomics’ and ‘neuromarketing’ to develop in the 21st Century (Kenning, Hubert and Linzmajer, 2012, pp.419-426).

Plassmann et al (2015) claim a number of large polling and market research companies with “neuromarketing” departments, used by companies as diverse as the food company, Campbell’s, and the broadcaster, Fox News. While it complements traditional consumer research, Standage and Trappenberg (2012) warn neuroscience is not ready to replace it entirely. There are critics of the neuromarketing approach, such as Addie (2011) who cites the “number of inadequacies” of using fMRI to examine brain functions, and is highly sceptical that neuroscience can actually deliver what it’s proponents claim.

Adopting a cautious approach, Plassmann et al (2015) outline five ways neuroscience could inform advertising strategy: identifying mechanisms, for example what causes consumers to lose control over their buying impulses; measuring implicit processes to explore situations where consumers cannot explain their buying actions; dissociating processes to see which decisions are intuitive reflexes and which are the product of conscious, rational thought; understanding the differences between individuals, which could help advertisers target individuals who are more likely to be susceptible to their messages; and, finally, improve predictions of how consumers are likely to behave. There are also challenges to using neuroscience in this way, including determining whether changes in the physiology of the brain definitely leads to behaviour change.

There have been some applied uses of neuroscience of interest to advertisers. Research reviewed by Kenning, Hubert and Linzmajer (2012) includes that adverts that consumers consider attractive led to brain activity in areas associated with integrating emotions into decision-making and rewards. Adverts rated as highly attractive and highly unattractive were more likely to be remembered. Brain areas associated with ‘rewards’ are also activated when products regarded as status symbols are viewed, with claims that neurological responses to products can then be used to predict purchasing behaviour.

Price has also been shown to have an effect – excessively high prices activate parts of the brain that anticipate losses, reducing the likelihood of a consumer to pick them. Kenning et al propose this could help businesses establish an acceptable ‘price threshold’. Finally, reinforcing the theory outlined by Harris & Sanborn (2014) about sex in advertising, Kenning et al (2012) comment that neuroimaging shows male consumers have the reward centres of their brains triggered by an attractive female face in an advert. This may have implications when businesses are choosing the ‘face’ of a particular advertising campaign.

References

Addie, I.  (2011) Is neuroscience facilitating a new era of the hidden persuader? International Journal of Market Research 53(3), 303-305

Harris, R. & Sanborn, F. (2014) A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication. Abingdon: Routledge

Kenning, P., Hubert, M. & Linzmajer (2012) “Consumer neuroscience” in Wells, V. & Foxall, G. (eds) Handbook of Developments in Consumer Behaviour. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar

Plassmann, H., Venkatraman, V., Huettel, S. & Yoon, C. (2015) Consumer Neuroscience: Applications, Challenges, and Possible Solutions. Journal of Marketing Research 52(4), 427-435

Standage, D. & Trappenberg, T. (2012) “Cognitive neuroscience” in Frankish, K. & Ramsey, W. (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marketing tip: Put your benefit front and central

Cathy saw this on the shelf at the supermarket and said, 'Well, that gets straight to the point'.

To the point

And she's right. It gets straight to the point and gives you the product benefit right there. It "Stops Smelly Sinks."

I think this is great marketing. If I had a smelly sink I would want a product to stop that. Seeing it made me wonder if we had a smelly sink. I was in the supermarket. I couldn't go and sniff the sink to check. I was tempted to buy it just in case. Maybe I could use it to make sure my sink didn't become smelly.

The first rule in marketing is tell people about the benefits, not the features. I don't want to know what it's made from, or what the active ingredients are, I want to know what it does or, more importantly, what it will do for me. This marketing puts the benefit front and central. I know if I use this it will stop my sink from smelling. It's clean and efficient marketing copy and I think it's great. Well done, Buster.

(I mean, I didn't buy it. But if I have to sort out a smelly sink in the future, then I probably will.)

Other posts about marketing
Analysing takeaway menus for marketing fails
'Marketing b*llocks' - the Camel Balls gum case study
Branding brilliance: How to make your Death Metal band stand out

Marketing b*llocks!! (Literally.) "Camel Balls" bubble gum - a branding case study

I saw these sweets being sold in the independent shop at the end of my street. I had to take a picture.

Look tasty, don't they.

Yep, that's right, bubble gum "Camel Balls". I stuck the photo on Facebook with predictable results from adults who were stunned by it and the one teenager who commented saying they were "actually surprisingly good".

In a way, I kind of admire their marketing. These are not sweets for grown ups. No Lindor master confectioner swirling delicious creamy chocolate in a bowl here. No, instead we have a pervy looking camel ready to teabag us with his over-sized camel nads. (Strangely no penis. Perhaps not so strangely...)

I can imagine teenage boys in particular taking great delight in these, and in that sense they are brilliantly marketed. They are deliberately gross - why else the emphasis on being "liquid-filled"? - but they are just about borderline indecent to be amusing rather than out and out offensive. The company know who they are aiming for and they just about manage to do it without making parents testy and writing outraged letters to the paper.

I also love the additional selling points tagged onto the box. These are gluten free, folks. Gluten free! Because the last thing you'd want to have to check is the small print on a camel ball bag to find that out.

What can we learn from this? Know your market and pitch to them. This isn't a product for everyone. And if you are going to be 'gross', then you might as well be as gross as possible. Even though the sweets look disgusting (to me), I like the way the marketing doesn't hold back at all.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts

Read another blog about marketing: The psychological basis for what makes a TV ad memorable
Also: Branding brilliance: How to make your Death Metal band stand out

What makes TV adverts memorable: Some nuggets from psychology research

I’m currently studying a part-time MSc in Business Psychology and we have moved on to a module about ‘external communications’. Branding and advertising, in other words.

Stars of a memorable TV ad...

I've been reading a number of papers while preparing for my first essay assignment. For fun, and to spread the knowledge, I’ve pulled out 9 factoids about TV advertising that have been evidenced by psychological researchers. Spot how many of these are true for you and how many techniques are being used by the broadcasters.

TV ads are remembered more if they are followed by ‘congruent programme content’, e.g. a beer advert is followed by a scene where people drink beer. (Furnham et al 2002)

However, TV ads are remembered less if they follow ‘congruent programme content’. (Furnham et al 2002) This means smart script writers would want to know what ads are going where to put all their congruent scenes in the right place. You want your scene in a pub after the beer advert, not before.

People are more likely to remember longer adverts than shorter ones. (Pieters & Bijmolt, 1997)

Stick too many adverts together and it’s more likely none of them will be remembered particularly well. Increasing the number of ads in a block from 4 to 5 begins to negatively impact memory. (Pieters & Bijmolt, 1997)

However, brand recognition afterwards is not reduced by having more adverts. People might not be able to consciously recall the advert, but the brand name is lurking in their brain somewhere! They will recognise it if they are shown it later. (Brown & Rothschild, 1993)

Don’t bother running your ads in the middle of commercial breaks. People tend to remember the first and last adverts in a sequence. (Terry, 2005) This is true even if they are the exact same adverts, just shown in a different order.

People are also more likely to remember adverts that appear in the earlier commercial breaks in a programme, than in ones later on. (Terry, 2005)

Leaving very short gaps between TV ads makes them easier to remember. (Pieters & Bijmolt, 1997) This one is clearly being used on a lot of channels these days. The break in programming catches our attention as viewers. Probably.

The BBC would make a killing if it could flog space in the middle of East Enders. Advertising content placed in ‘happy’ programmes was not remembered as well as in ‘unhappy’ content. (Furnham et al 2002) The effect of an unhappy programme is magnified if the advert is violent and/or offensive. (We are lovely people, aren’t we? Remembering violent adverts in miserable programmes.)

References

• Brown & Rothschild (1993) "Reassessing the Impact of Television Advertising Clutter," Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 20
• Furnham, Bergland & Gunter (2002) "Memory for Television Advertisements as a Function of Advertisement–Programme Congruity." Applied Cognitive Psychology 16
• Pieters & Bijmolt (1997) "Consumer Memory for Television Advertising: A Field Study of Duration,Serial Position, and Competition Effects." Journal of Consumer Research. Vol. 23
• Terry (2005) "Serial Position Effects in Recall of Television Commercials." The Journal of General Psychology, 132(2)

Branding brilliance: How to make your Death Metal band stand out

This has been going around Twitter recently as an example of how to make your death metal band stand out. As a general branding lesson I think it's awesome.

Who wouldn't want to go to Deathfest 2?

I can't even read many of the names that are all trying to be more-death-metal-than-thou, but I will remember Party Cannon with their bright colours and bubbly font! (Apparently they are from Scotland. There's a track on YouTube if you can bear it.)

The branding lesson is - if you want to be memorable, don't take the existing trope and try to make yourself a more extreme version of it. If anything that will make you less noticeable.

Marketing synchronicity

It's so nice to see a company make sure that all their communications potential supports their brand.