We all love biscuits, it can't be denied that a cup of tea wouldn't be the same without them, and there is no brand more synonymous with biscuits than McVitie's.
Though McVitie's was first launched almost 200 years ago, the company merged with fellow MacFarlane Lang to form United Biscuits in the late 1940's and ever since, the brand has gone from strength to strength. In fact, United Biscuits enjoys a rumoured 40% market share in the UK's 'biscuit trade', a market that encompasses a staggering 99.2% of the population who purchase biscuits in a year. According to United Biscuits marketing director Sarah Heynen, this is “the highest penetration of any food category!”.
United Biscuits chief executive Martin Glenn (who has previous experience with PepsiCo UK and Bird's Eye) was brought into the fold to reinvigorate the brand and boost overseas sales. The company have undertaken a £50 million capital investment this year (a record for the company), compared to last year's £38 million. Glenn believes that the company's products have been “under-managed”, and has said that “while the products are strong, the biscuits are beginning to look old fashioned”.
By relaunching the biscuits with new packaging and by bringing all other United Biscuits sweet products (including Penguin bars and Jaffa Cakes) under the McVitie's banner, Glenn hopes to establish a “master-brand” relaunch, which has been researched extensively over the last 12 months. The new packaging has been designed by the JKR global design agency and sees all products adopting the company's iconic 'wheat-sheaf' logo.
Mr Glenn has stated that the company plans to revert to the 'classic' digestive biscuit recipe, after the low fat version failed to ignite much enthusiasm amongst the British tea-drinking public. This altered recipe was first implemented in 2010 by replacing sustainable palm oil with sunflower oil, which significantly lowered the biscuits overall fat content but also changed their taste and texture, which irked many of the biscuits most ardent and loyal fans. The reverted recipe will be implemented throughout all 12 of the company's manufacturing facilities (7 of which are based here in the UK).
Sweeet
More often than not, a relaunch will be accompanied by a fresh advertising campaign, which in this case will be a £12 million campaign for the brands most successful biscuits and cakes, the Digestives and Jaffa Cakes respectively. The campaign (launched on the 3rd of February and creative by the Grey London creative agency) attempts to play on the “emotional role that biscuits play in our lives” by using a diiferent animal to represent each respective biscuit and implementing the 'sweeet' strap-line to further underline the campaigns emotional connection. Kittens will be used in all of the Chocolate Digestives advertising materials, puppies for regular Digestives and Tarsiers (officially the worlds smallest primate) for Jaffa Cakes.
It should be noted that there have been rumours floating about that suggest the company might be bought out by the Chinese private equity group Hony Capital, who have expressed a serious interest in the company (which was bought by Blackstone and PAI for £1.6 billion in 2006). Glenn however remains tight-lipped, stating that he “Can't comment” and that there are “No plans to sell the business”, though he does admit to the speculation.
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance copywriter, blogger, musician and biscuit enthusiast from Kidderminster who knows in his heart that a Jaffa Cake is a biscuit, NOT a cake!
