Articles

Scott writes a monthly article for the trade magazine: International Sandwich & Snack News. Following are two from the latest issues.

Stop copying my sandwiches!

There seems to be a lot of copying going on at the moment. Not the sort that you and I used to do at school, which, in my case, involved nothing more than leaning over and stealing a glance at someone’s equations in maths. No, this copying is a bit bigger than that. At the more extreme end of the market, it involves Tesco building a copycat store round the back of its Hertfordshire headquarters, designed to mimic the Aldi and Lidl shopping experience. This rather sinister parallel universe has been born out of Tesco allegedly being a bit worried about the rather aggressive UK expansion plans of Aldi and Lidl.

Before Aldi and Lidl take the moral high ground, they need to look at their own mimicry, which generally involves launching brands such as ‘Norpak’. To the uninitiated, Norpak is essentially Lurpak in disguise. And not a very good one. Don’t be surprised if you go in there tomorrow and they are selling Nars Bars and a blackcurrant drink called Whybena (actually I might copyright that one).

It’s not just the discounters that are at it. At the normally sedate and relatively dignified ‘other end’ of the market, Waitrose and M&S are locked in an ideological boxing match over who has the best ‘dine-out dine-in ten pound meal’ for Middle England. In the red corner, Marks and Spencers, punch drunk from their latest figures, launch their haymaker of a ‘Dine in For Two for £10’ deal. This offering consists of two prepared meals, a portion of veg, dessert and a bottle of wine. Waitrose, not to be outdone have counter-punched with their ‘10 Dinner for Two’ which involves exactly the same, but you get to know what the farmer looks like on the packet before you throw it in the microwave.

Both of them were designed to mimic the experience of eating in a restaurant - they have a long way to go in my house, unless it is a restaurant themed around sitting in a kitchen watching Eastenders.

So, is it acceptable for companies to rip off, sorry, I mean emulate other companies’ brands and strategies? Unsurprisingly, according to Suzanna Dyke, Marketing Director at Waitrose, the answer is ‘yes’. Justifying her company’s actions in last week’s Marketing Magazine she states:

“This offer may have worked in a similar way to promotions run by M&S, but everyone in the supermarket industry is well aware that nobody has the copyright on a particular promotional mechanic.”

So that’s alright then. Some companies are fighting back, but you can’t help thinking that Absolut Vodka are barking up the wrong tree by announcing last month that they would be legally challenging Absolute Radio over the name of their radio station.

Take heart if your sandwiches or snacks are being copied, you are in great company and, in my opinion, imitation is still the highest form of flattery. One of my competitors has spent an inordinate amount of time trying to emulate our business model, marketing and branding, but I take comfort in an extract from a Rudyard Kipling poem:

They copied all they could follow, but they
couldn’t copy my mind,
And I left ‘em sweating and stealing, a year
an a half behind.

My sandwich is half-full

The vase swathes of redundancies moving through some sectors, coupled with economic uncertainty have hit the headlines and, for some people, times are undeniably bleak. However (and I know it’s not very British), I think sometimes it’s important to focus on the positives, so, in the interests of good news, here goes.

Firstly, congratulations are in order – if you work in food production, you have picked an industry sector that if not exactly recession-proof is as near as it gets. It’s a cliché, but ‘everyone has to eat’ and during a recession there are plenty of worse sectors of commerce and industry to be in than chilled food manufacturing. Whilst it might not be as glamorous as international finance, banking staff carrying their belongings out of their offices in empty Champagne boxes kind of tells its own story.

The UK food industry contributes over £56 billion – or 7.6% of GDP - to the UK economy and generates some 3.23 million jobs. Exports of processed food and drink goods alone are worth £8 billion. The food manufacturing industry is a mature sector with a very strong domestic base – it’s going to be a long time before sandwiches can be made cheaper abroad, if ever.

During the last recession in the nineties, some food companies even recorded growth, Cadbury's being one of them. They are currently bucking the trend again, and last month reported a 46% rise in profits during the first half of 2008 - "No matter how bleak economies look, people always go for treats and that's why we have seen no real slowdown," said the company's Chief Executive, Todd Stitzer.

I would concur with Mr Stitzer and add to that that people are much more likely to stop eating at restaurants and more likely to sit at home with a bar of Dairy Milk, watching a DVD – hence the recent clever marketing campaign by M&S along the lines of ‘eat in for a tenner’. Similarly, a knock on effect at lunchtime could see people going for fewer sit-down lunches and a rise in sandwich and snacking consumption.

Retailers can also benefit – Marketing magazine recently reported that German-owned Aldi had: “Grown its sales in the UK by 20% in the last three months.” Both Aldi and Lidl have aggressive expansion plans in the UK and offer an exciting new market for manufacturing suppliers.

Finally, it is a truism that in a recession the people you pay to provide goods and services start to treat you like a customer again, as opposed to an inconvenience – it may not be time to start celebrating but there are still reasons to be cheerful and personally, my sandwich is nearly always half full.

 

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