The above headline is a Vegemite-free reworking of Men At Work’s “Down Under”, shamelessly pilfered from Twitter as an example of the hundreds of negative and abusive comments being directed at Kraft over the iSnack2.0 debacle.
On current projections the iSnack2.0 disaster will be taught for years to come in marketing courses as a step-by-step example of how to upset everybody - the oldies who are fiercely loyal to Vegemite in its existing incarnation, and the youngsters who regard the internet-driven name of this (woeful) new brand as patronising gimmickry, akin to Sorbent trying to corner the youth market with a “hip and groovy” new toilet tissue called iShit.
AS any student of yeast-based food extracts can attest, the history of sandwich spreads is a volatile one where passions run high and careers, even entire companies, have risen and fallen on the back of their marketing campaigns.
It was in 1922 that the English spread Marmite came under attack with the invention by heroic young Australian chemist Cyril P Callister of what would soon be known as Vegemite.
The Fred Walker Cheese Company held a competition to name the spread and Vegemite came up trumps. The origin of the word is unknown, its author lost to the ages.
The thinking was that the Aussie-made condiment could take on the dominant English brand in Marmite. But far from being the juggernaut it is today, Vegemite had such a sluggish start that its parent company changed its name to Parwill six years later.
Its slogan - “If Marmite, Parwill” - was deemed to be so dorky even by 1930s standards that sales plunged even further and Fred Walker almost went under.
As Vegemite returned, it grew throughout the war and really hit its straps in 1954 with the release of the Happy Little Vegemites jingle, a tune so enduring that it would be reprised some four decades later with a further kick to sales.
The 1950s also saw the invention of the quite passable Promite, now owned by Masterfoods, establishing the yeast-based spread market as a three-way contest of which Vegemite is the undisputed king.
The only person mad enough in recent times to tackle this Vegemite-dominated market was Dick Smith who, in a pitch to jingoism, targeted its ownership by international food conglomerate Kraft with the release of something unappetising which Smith named Aussiemite, presumably because Dickmite tested poorly in focus groups.
It beggars belief, then, that the one company which would come along now and unsettle the natural order of things is Kraft itself, with the invention of a hideous beige slurry the consistency of hand cream which, in a chilling repeat of the Parwill debacle, has been christened iSnack 2.0 after a readers contest where the product went to market for two months with “Name Me” written on the jar.
The selection of the name of this new product - which is apparently 80 per cent Vegemite and 20 per cent cream cheese - is fast becoming the biggest modern marketing catastrophe since Cherry Coke as it seems to have offended just about everyone.
Purists hate it because they argue you can’t improve on perfection, and tampering with the master recipe for Vegemite, even in a spin-off brand, is ugly and un-Australian. Younger people hate it because the name is such a tragically desperate attempt to sound hip and groovy by using not one but two webby words.
The moral of this story might be - the next time the marketing people want to show you a powerpoint demonstration, fire up the toaster and tell them you’re too busy eating Vegemite.
This is the Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie principle - from the Simpsons episode where, faced with a ratings freefall, the marketing department at Itchy and Scratchy used focus groups to create a third character which had to be “proactive”, “edgy” and “in your face”, and invented an environmentally-conscious skateboarding rastafarian beagle, dressed in Wayfarers and a backwards baseball cap, called Poochie the Rockin’ Dog. Its catchcry “Totally Extreeeeeeme” was so annoying that it lasted one episode and was written out of the show with the immortal line: “I have to go now, my planet needs me.”
Unless, of course, it’s all been a cunning ruse by Kraft’s marketing people to invent a product that’s such rubbish, with a tagline that’s so annoying, that it unleashes an unprecedented wave of fervour for the original master brand which ends up selling more than ever before. If I worked there, and was getting ready for the five-hour meeting with the CEO this Friday, this would be my alibi.
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