The Adjustable Productions Business Blog

Moving on from the rather crass re-branding of Mr Muscle (which I focused on in an earlier post), something caught my eye while in Wilkinson’s yesterday. I spotted two brands sitting side by side that have not been obviously altered since the 1980’s, if ever. The brands in question are Frazzles and Chipsticks.

Chipsticks and Frazzles, 2009 - or is it 1989?

There are some interesting things about this consistent approach to branding and design. For one, the products look very 1980’s. They retain a lot of the design style, layout and typefaces common in that era. If you jumped into a time machine and snuck it onto Sainsbury’s shelves in the 1983, the current product would probably hard to spot amongst the product of that era. However, perhaps surprisingly, they also keep the classic ‘Smiths’ logo, even though the brand is now owned by their former leading competitor, Walkers.

A Chipsticks close up. Miss no detail...

I am not quite sure what the marketing thinking is behind this approach (some may argue it a non-approach) to product design, but I think I like it. Many producers seem to have an unhealthy pre-occupation with always claiming that there is something new about their product, constantly changing and tweaking the contents and the packaging. In the current retail climate, where a lot of groceries and food shopping is done in vast hypermarkets that carry hundreds of thousands of lines, I think there is a real benefit to having an easily recognised products design. And while there are people that do have the attitude of wanting the ‘new’ thing, a lot of people actually just want the reassuring familiarity of the brand that they know and are comfortable with. Jazzy rebrands and product redesigns can alienate a lot of that core market. I am still yet to be convinced that radical redesigns actually do more good than damage.

What a lot of marketing people seem to miss is how effective the campaigns of yesteryear were, and that people really do attach a lot of nostalgia to the logos, the typefaces, the colours, the packaging, the catchphrases, the adverts and so on. For instance, on the way back from that that trip to Wilkinsons, we walked past a newsagent that had a flag with the most recent Walls ice cream logo, and another with a logo from the late 80’s/early 90’s. The new logo meant nothing to me, but the old logo reminded me of holidays at Sandbanks, walking on the beach, watching the tide go out for miles, and all the little things that I associated with the good times had when consuming the product. Now, the newer logo might inspire this for people who were going on those holidays 10 years later, but I am not sure. For me the newer logo just looks like a swish corporate effort, used to impress shareholders and investors when it is on the front of some portfolio, and it just makes me think how much more rubbish and miserable and full of care life has become. If there was a little more consistency in the logo, everyone that sees it could be more inclined to hold the values and feelings it implants during childhood.

It does not seem that the value of old campaigns and designs are entirely lost on the established branding giants. Some have recognised that reverting to old designs can bring about reminiscence and nostalgia for times perceived as ‘happier’ and ’simpler’ (such as in a recent soap powder campaign), and they want these themes associated with their product. Some have observed that the current economic climate seems to be driving a nostalgic interest in consumers for both old versions of their branding and older versions of the actual products themselves. What is more, it must be an appealing approach for brands that are trading with reduced marketing budgets. Recycling old campaigns is surely cheaper than commissioning a brand new one?

I shall look at the various approaches marketeers are taking towards re-purposing old campaigns in some forthcoming posts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Marketing and adverts, Products and packaging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.