brand marketing blog

The story is old news now. Cadbury adds nasty palm oil to its much loved chocolates to save money. Consumers go ballistic and rage war in social media circles. Whittakers gets more positive free publicity than the GDP of a small African nation. Cadbury actually listens and changes their brand strategy (replaces palm oil with cocoa butter in recipe).

Cadbury New Zealand Managing Director, Matthew Oldham, said the decision to go back to using only cocoa butter in Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate was in direct response to consumer feedback. Its a pity they didn't pay much attention to detail, dating their press release 17/8/2008! (I expect they may change it when they read this post).

"Word of mouse" is a powerful force and today's consumer has more power than ever before. There are numerous examples where a single consumer has brought an entire internationally regarded brand into disrepute. Marketers have no choice but to listen to their constituency and respond positively.

Market research has traditionally been the backbone of brand marketing and focus groups, surveys etc were the norm. But today we have social media and blogs that can give us much more credible and direct feedback from actual customers, not survey respondents who are often 'enticed' to attend focus groups. The effectiveness of focus group research has been debated long and feedback from these structured sessions should be taken for what they are.

If brand owners actively participate in social media and develop an online community of followers, they will have the best market research mechanism available. How does Cadbury's brand manager feel today after his/her strategy has been tossed out the window by a bunch of whinging bloggers, Tweeters and FaceBookers?

As He-Man from the TV series Masters of the Universe says, "I have the power".