Marathon is back! Back!! BACK!! : Mars have cashed in one of their longer-standing “free goodwill” chips by restoring – however briefly – 70s/80s icon Marathon to its brand portfolio (whether it’ll completely replace Snickers, and for how long, are unknowns). The comments on this Brandrepublic story are withering – how unimaginative, the marketers scoff, how short-sighted.
AS IF! Not that I feel the re-re-brand is anything other than a deeply cynical move but it’s a well-timed one and likely to succeed in the short-term without damaging the brand in the long term. The cohort of consumers who identified with Marathon are now getting beyond the age where they buy countline confectionery – how better to get them to at least re-try the product? Nostalgia – especially for a cheaper age – works well in times of economic difficulty – and so does the parochialism which Mars is tapping into by jettisoning its ‘global’ Snickers brand. It’s a bit of free publicity in a sector where headline-making innovation is thin on the ground. And it’s sufficiently long after the Marathon brand was dropped originally for the move not to look like any kind of admission of error by Mars.
They have recently done a limited edition retro rebrand Opal Fruits as well.
I have always found this urge for the global brand vs local an interesting one – compare and contrast with the previously identified anomaly around Walls / Heartbrand: same logo, different name in every country.
Yeah, but nostalgia and parochialism may be effective, but they’re not worth lauding, surely?
not-parochialism-but-it-looks-like-it: “Magners, the Irish Cider! PS please do not ask for it in Ireland”
Ask me that again when I’ve read what Grant Morrison does with Barry Allen, Andrew!
I generally think that there’s no difference between “effective” and “laudable” in marketing as long as you’re not stepping over ethical boundaries (which in this case plainly nobody is). The marketing and ad industry’s image of itself as some kind of garden of creativity continually forced to lower itself to the whim of cruel Dame Commerce is a complete joke.
Ha ha, you can ask for Bulmers though – and be paying a different company.
Nostalgia can be worth lauding, if the alternative is a faceless monoculture.
(it’s also a near complete projection on my part too! but it does seem to lie beneath the surface of some of the marketing and ad blogs I read – obviously most people want effective AND creative though)
I’d be surprised if Morrison hits nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia, though, his ideas tends to have actual ideas in them.
What would Morrison do with a Marathon? maybe he could produce a chocolate bar that came to the realisation that it was a chocolate bar.
mars’ better marketing thing this summer is the “oh shit we’ve got 100,000 footballs and now england aren’t in euro 2008, what can we do with them???” promotion, somebody should totally win an award for that…
I think it’s interesting that they appear to be getting into what amounts to a nostagiafest for 30somethings – Marathon became Snickers when I was about 7/8, so it appears as if they’re appealing to people who are – at the very least – in their late 20s.
Does anyone know how successful the (seemingly similarly motivated) Wispa re-launch was?
Apparently very successful – it’s now back permanently.
But I think it would be unwise to take Wispa sales as a projection for relaunches – there really isn’t a bar quite like Wispa in texture on the market, whereas Marathon and Snickers are obviously the same thing.
WHY OH WHY is SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION MARATHON WRAP not available in fashionable TESCO EXPRESS store in hot, hip FULHAM is this just for over-trendy HOXTON HOOSIERS?
Calm down dear, they’ve only registered the trademark :)
(in fact I wonder if it’s not just a trademark protection thing anyway, like the way Marvel Comics has to do a Captain Marvel series every few years whether or not anybody wants one.)