Or maybe gone right?
Crowdsourcing is a new word for an old idea, but when should it be used?
Have you come across the saga of the new Vegemite sub brand in Australia called....well we’re not sure what it’s called. And neither is anyone else, it would seem. And neither does anyone seem to know who should decide.
The story goes like this:
Kraft have launched a line extension of Vegemite containing cream cheese. Apparently the original Vegemite was named by the public in a competition judged by Fred Walker’s daughter. (Fred was the founder of the business.) This was in 1923, showing crowdsourcing to be a very old idea.
So there was a clear rationale for asking the public to choose the name of the new line extension: it went back to the roots of the brand, which is of course a national institution in Australia, and asking the nation their view about a brand that is as much theirs as it is Kraft’s made a lot of sense.
It is of note that the invitation to come up with names and then vote for the winner all took place online. This of course reaches a particular type of consumer in a particular frame of mind.
48,000 people responded. We can’t work out whether that is a lot or a little.
The name chosen was ‘iSnack 2.0’. On the face of it, an entirely inappropriate name for a yeast based cream cheese spread. But is it really inappropriate? Google isn’t an appropriate name for a search engine but it doesn’t stop it entering the dictionary and the world is full of irrational brand names or names that in themselves mean nothing (‘HP’ sauce?). ‘iSnack 2.0’ implies it’s a modern variant and the second variant, so could it be OK, even if it lacks any of the brands heritage. The obvious derivation from Apple sub brands is a bit disappointing, but no more disappointing than many marketing moves.
Now comes the twist. The product was launched and consumers, who remember chose the name, have said they don’t like it. And so it is going to be renamed. The new name is going to be chosen....by consumers again. They are going to choose from some of the less popular ideas from last time!
On the face it this is a shambles. Responsibility for the brand has been handed over to the consumer to far too great a degree and a mess has occurred. And what if people complain about the new, new name? Will it change again?
But maybe things aren’t so bad. Kraft applied a contemporary technique, crowdsourcing, to a brand that was relevant by virtue of it’s original naming process. What seemed to go wrong was that the consumer was allowed to decide with absolute freedom, not simply to express an opinion, or to decide with some constraints.
Names can be imbued with meaning and the most unlikely names can succeed. (To Google again. It’s easy to forget that when it launched only a few years ago it’s name was laughed at. No one’s laughing now.) But ‘iSnack 2.0’ isn’t just meaningless. It is misleading and irrelevant and that’s where it fails. It started from the wrong place: from a consumer mindset that was engaged with the web, not with the brand, the product, the consumer, or the occasion.
To Kraft’s credit they haven’t just changed the name themselves. They have stuck with their original (1923) approach of crowdsourcing but have learnt from their recent experience. This time the consumer is being asked to choose from a shortlist of eminently sensible names, even if some of them are a bit dull. But better that than daft, and they’ll probably lose anyway. Because the names are safe consumers won’t reject them like last time. At worst they’ll be a bit underwhelmed, although we like one of the options a lot.
We admire Kraft for what they’ve done, they’ve applied a new approach to an appropriate brand and they haven’t run away when things have gone a bit awry.
But there do seem to be some lessons:
1: By all means embrace the consumer and let them participate in your brand but don’t forget who’s responsible for managing it. It’s not the consumer.
2: We like the web. You wouldn’t be able to read this if we didn’t. And we like a lot of the changes it has brought, and continues to bring. But the moral of this story is make sure you use it appropriately.
3: In an age of change, of new methods and of new relationships with consumers, common sense remains as valuable as it ever was.
If you would like to vote for the new name, go here.
Do it quickly. Voting closes on Oct 5.