Earlier this year, there was a successful campaign to restore the vegetarian status of the Mars Bar. The campaign apparently benefited both Mars consumers and the company itself. (See my posts Life on Mars, 2, 3.)
Now it's Cadbury's turn. "Facebook Campaign Saves Departed Candy Bar" (WebProNews via Scribe).
In similar vein, I recall a brilliant marketing anti-campaign when I was a child - people had bumper stickers attacking the Esso Marketing Manager, and demanding the return of the Esso Tiger. (This was decades before the environmentalists started to demand the Tiger Out of Your Tank.)
In my more cynical moments, I imagine the possibility that these campaigns might be orchestrated by the companies themselves. But of course from a POSIWID perspective, it may be unclear and maybe even unimportant who is manipulating whom. A wise company always allows itself to be influenced by its customers - so who is really in charge?
People don't like change - that one's obvious. But is there an increasing level of nostalgia in society, and if so, what does that say about modern culture?
ReplyDeleteTake, for instance, the various re-introductions of old adverts (Aquafresh springs to mind, but I think there have been others), and/or the use of old characters to introduce modern products (Basil Brush, amongst others, IIRC?).
So more than keeping things as they are, it seems we often want things to *return* to an old incarnation - a *rejection* of more modern attempts, in fact. An idea that this sparked off: Does modern culture deliberately create poor imitations so that we feel a resurgent need to recapture ("buy") the past? How many people went out and bought the original Wicker Man film after seeing Nick Cage's re-hash?