I read a recent listing of the top 10 brands in UK chocolate confectionery with interest not because there were any surprises, but more because of the absence of any new names.
The average age of these brands is 69 and in the UK alone, they deliver average annual turnover of £144m. Moreover, were it not for young upstarts like Twirl and Wispa, the average would be even older, and if one were to conclude that Twirl is an extension of Flake and Wispa a response to Aero, one could revise the average age to nearer 80.
This raises two questions: the first is what on earth happened in the 1930s to drive such an explosion in NPD? Looking at the history of Rowntree’s, I note KitKat, Black Magic, Aero, Dairy Box, Smarties, Rolo and Polo all came out in the 1930s. Cadbury’s and Terry’s enjoyed a similarly fertile period of NPD in the decade leading up to WW2.
“What happpened in the 1930s to drive such an NPD explosion?”
Was it down to shifts in cocoa or sugar commodity pricing and availability, or a transformation in processing technology? Was it the burgeoning access to national advertising through press and posters at exactly the time when consumers, hit by the financial crash, needed cheering up, courtesy of small confectionery treats? Most likely it was a combination of all of the above.
And so to the second, perhaps more important question will we ever see the like of this extraordinarily successful period for innovation in a food category again? Even if we do, what proportion of new launches could we reasonably expect to be around 70 or 80 years hence?
This year’s Grocer New Product Awards winners gives a clue it illustrates how profoundly the world has changed in terms of the approach taken by manufacturers to managing the balance of risk and return in innovation.
Most of the list are, unsurprisingly, not new brands at all, but extensions to established brands. One even represents the marriage of two established brands brought together by M&A: CDM with Oreo.
Those that do represent technological breakthrough are mostly international brands where the cost of the new technology has been, or will be, amortised across multiple geographies.
As for being around in 70 or 80 years, when I scan the list there are few new brands that I believe will have the asset value of Rowntree’s 1930s launches. The principle of ‘sweating existing assets’ now applies as much to brand assets as the kit that makes them. New brand successes are not quite as rare as hens’ teeth, but they’re heading in that direction.
For marketers, this requires a rigorous understanding of where one’s brand can or can’t stretch and a pragmatism to sometimes follow the less sexy path of brand extension rather than the all-guns-blazing new brand launch.
With the global tide of NPD moving so resolutely in one direction, it is perhaps no surprise that today’s new brand introductions are so often at the hands of the entrepreneur rather than the corporates who can, after all, always cherrypick the best entrepreneurial success stories and acquire them when their potential is clear!
Will Carter is founder of Food Strategy Associates
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