Marketing - Written by William Hobson on Friday, October 15, 2010 16:40 - 0 Comments
A glass and a half becomes 468ml
Cadbury’s iconic slogan of more than 80 years is to be dropped from its Dairy Milk bars in favour of a much less memorable slogan clearly establishing the exact measures of “fresh liquid milk” per gram of chocolate.
This change has attracted coverage from far outside the circles of marketing news. The Daily Mail for example, reported late last month that a spokesperson for Cadbury attributed the change to a decision made in 2007. According to the spokesperson, the wording change was due to “regulatory” issues as Cadbury’s no longer sells the half-pound bars the slogan originally referred to – as “the phrase didn’t make sense if the pack stated the bar weighs 49g or 230g”.
Instead, the slogan will be replaced by the phrase “The equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate” – though the iconic picture of a glass and a half of milk will still appear on every bar sold by the brand.
According to another report by This is Money, Cadbury claims that the “regulatory” issues were due to EU rules requiring that by 2010 all weights and measures on food items must be in metric.
“Given our long run times we felt it was sensible to make that change now,” said a spokesman.
Speaking to the BBC, Cadbury spokesperson Tony Bilsborough claimed that the decision was made on the basis of external legal advice, which was “checked…with Birmingham trading standards officers, who confirmed that was the case.”
However the UK’s Trading Standards Institute has questioned the decision and the legal advice that led Cadbury to make the decision. “The Trading Standards Institute would have no objection to the continued use of the famous slogan unless it was considered misleading by customers”, said spokesman Andy Foster in the same BBC report.
“The Cadbury slogan is well known by consumers and should not be confused or caught up with food labelling laws,” he said.
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