Tayto has increased its market share despite fierce competition, aided by its anarchic advertising campaigns
ICONIC IRISH brand Tayto exemplifies the problems encountered by local brands in a globalised world. Savaged by rapacious retailers on the one side it is under relentless assault from multinational brands with far greater resources on the other.
In Tayto’s case the latter is particularly severe with three of the world’s leading consumer goods companies breathing down their necks: Proctor Gamble (Pringles), PepsiCo (Walkers) and United Biscuits (KP Hula Hoops). In spite of these travails Tayto managed to increase its brand leadership position in the crisps and snacks market in 2009. Although the effects of marketing communications campaigns are notoriously difficult to unravel there’s a strong case to be made for Tayto’s wonderfully anarchic advertising and promotions having played a significant role in the brand’s recovery.
The brand suffered from neglect during the first half of the noughties with two changes of ownership and a consequent lack of continuity and consistency in marketing support. It was sold by CC to Ray Coyle’s Largo Foods in 2006 and the Meathman immediately set about restoring the brand’s credentials by making Mr Tayto the brand spokesman.
The election of 2007 provided the ideal platform as Mr Tayto gate-crashed the election with a series of policies including peace and reconciliation: “it’s time the Northside and the Southside learned to live together”. In 2008 Mr Tayto embraced the digital age as he launched a nationwide search for a wife using Facebook and Bebo and irresistible lonely hearts small ads: “Are you a lovely girl? Potato-shaped individual would like to meet thick-ankled lovelies with marriage in mind. Must enjoy the finer things in life like a spin in a Massey Ferguson, crisp sandwiches and a good old knees-up. If your turn-ons include wellies, snacks and a bloke in a hat, I’m your only man.”
The 2009 campaign is based on Mr Tayto’s autobiography, a lavishly produced full-colour book telling the hilarious story of the life and times of our hero, retailing in book shops at
€6 and supported by an €800,000 media campaign. In common with previous campaigns the audaciousness of the content generates at least an equal amount of unpaid publicity in terms of media commentary.
On the surface the whole approach seems slipshod and amateur; there’s no formal market research, no away-day planning sessions and the main elements of the campaign are driven in freewheeling style by Coyle and his marketing director Rita Kirwan.
But if you scratch this campaign a little you’ll find it’s at the cutting edge of 21st-century marketing communications. We are continually reminded that today’s marketing landscape is dominated by product parity, retailer power, consumer indifference and new technologies which have fundamentally changed the rules. To overcome these trends businesses must uncover deeper insights into the anxieties and concerns of consumers and must engage with them in more meaningful ways.
A recent collection of essays from the prestigious Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University stated in its introduction that “in an era of extreme advertising clutter and consumer avoidance, perhaps no other recent concept has captured more interest from marketers than engagement . . . Engagement embodies a heightened sense of involvement, of being connected with something.” The Tayto campaign strategy fulfils this objective, completely inverting traditional thinking by substituting the standard “and now a word from our sponsor” with the audacious request that you fork out €6 to read what is in effect a 114-page advertisement for the brand.
Stephen Brown, professor of marketing research at the University of Ulster, would almost certainly approve of this campaign. A consistent theme of Brown’s is that marketing is always going to be more of an art than a science and that attempts to turn it in to a positivist discipline are not only doomed to failure but are in danger of stifling creativity.
Instead of following the American-led academics, he advocates a return to the example of consummate showman Phineas Taylor Barnum. Brown derides the currently fashionable preoccupation with “getting close to the consumer” or “being passionate about your brand” and argues that the public response to such bladderings is likely to evoke the perfectly valid question: Who is this lying git and why is he saying he loves me? He recommends instead Barnam’s more realistic approach: “There’s one born every minute”. He recommends we should take a leaf out of our snake-oil salesman ancestry and “Tease” (tricksterism, exaggeration, adolescence, spirituality and entertainment) customers. The Man in the Jacket ticks most of these boxes.
Brown has also proposed the notion of Celtic marketing as an alternative to the dominant Anglo-American command and control model. If the multinational model is dominated by the four Ps (product, price, place and promotion) the Celtic model is characterised by Qs: “quaint, quick, quirky, quarrelsome, querulous, questing quibblers”.
More cerebral support for Mr Tayto comes from the study of Jungian archetypes. Described as the "most ancient groves in our mental architecture" archetypes have obvious relevance for brand managers anxious to create deeper meaning for their brands. In The Hero and the OutlawMargaret Mark and Carol Pearson show how some of the world's most powerful brands consistently tap into the universal feelings and instincts represented by ancient archetypes. They outline the 12 major archetypes from the Hero and Sage to the Outlaw and Magician including one that exemplifies Mr Tayto: the Jester. "The Jester calls us to come out and play with one another. Jester figures enjoy life and interaction for its own sake. Preferring to be the life of the party the Jester lets it rip. The Jester's willingness to break rules leads to innovative . . . thinking."
In his role of national jester, poking fun at the pomposity and pretentiousness of the command and control model of marketing Mr Tayto could also be regarded as a classic example of a cultural brand as explained by Douglas Holt in How Brands Become Icons. "Iconic brands provide extraordinary identity value because they address the collective anxieties and desires of a nation. Iconic brands function like cultural activists, encouraging people to think differently about themselves."
At a time when the nation is in a economic crisis we all need a bit of diversion and the fact that Tayto’s book is currently outselling all those earnest accounts of how the developers, bankers and politicians landed us in such a mess would seem to bear this out.
The whole notion of Celtic marketing has interesting implications for Irish brands.
Tayto along with brands such as Ryanair and Paddy Power appear to be following the precepts of Celtic marketing, but it is the Irish food sector battling the twin threats of concentration of retailer power and superior firepower of multinational brands that may have the most to gain from considering this approach. For a start it is relatively inexpensive because it derives much of its power from an ability to hijack other events for its own use and because of its reliance on word-of-mouth and media coverage to achieve its effect. Celtic marketing is a form of guerrilla marketing which relies on unconventional imaginative thinking rather than big budgets. For that reason it would appear to have a particular appeal to the Irish market. It is also an approach which forces opponents on the defensive. Multinational brands take themselves incredibly seriously. Celtic marketing, by adopting a more tongue-in-cheek approach, can often make global brands look pompous and patronising. So as the Celtic Tiger fades into oblivion let us welcome Celtic marketing with its potential to single-handedly kick start the economy and simultaneously lighten our load: Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man Inside the Jacket.
John Fanning is author of
The Importance of Being Branded: An Irish Perspective
(Liffey Press 2006)
