Month: January 2021

1947: The Merchant of Death

/ Paul Christopher Walton / 1 Comment

It was 1947 when the murders began in Tudor Close. Anthony had planned them on long, tedious afternoons at the Birmingham armaments factory where he was working to help win the war. He hadn’t meant to be a serial killer on this scale. His first love was the piano and he had toured the world and some of its great country houses accompanying a Norwegian soprano called Kirsten Flagstad. But that was in a former life before he became the Merchant of Death. 

He had a number of accomplices lined up to help him including an ex-soldier, a nurse, a shapely femme fatale and a slightly greasy looking priest he called Reverend Green, whose speciality was death by lead piping. Anthony Pratt was the creator of Cluedo (or Clue as it known in the USA) the great board game of find-the-murderer set in an English country House.

Cluedo was one a series of great board game brands for the masses that appeared in the middle of the Twentieth Century, each taking a well-known ‘world’ and designing addictive gameplay around it, all made possible by advances in cheap colour printing and packaging. Escalado (1928) featured the excitement of horseracing and betting; Monopoly (1935) the pursuit of property and capitalist zero sum fun; and Buccaneer(1937) mixed piracy with Yo Ho Ho and treasure.

Pratt was convinced that murder could be a huge business based on the sales of whodunits (the word was coined by Donald Gordon in 1939) and the popularity of writers like Agatha Christie whose The Body in the Library was a big hit in 1942. Having designed a prototype called Murder, he was introduced to Norman Watson, the Managing Director of Waddingtons who held the UK licence for Monopoly. Watson loved it but changed the name to Cluedo (a classic worger of clue and ludo, the latin word for I play) and made a one or two other changes to Pratt’s original designs which included rebranding Colonel Yellow and Nurse White to the more familiar Colonel Mustard and cook, Mrs White.

The launch of the game coincided with the re-opening of Chatsworth and Longleat after the Second World War, and as the crowds came back to the great houses, amateur gumshoes returned to the billiard room and conservatory in search of the murderer most foul.

I think I played my first game of Cluedo in the early 1960s but to be honest I don’t think I was ever too successful at the pen-and-paper deductive stuff. But many years later I found the game and Anthony’s wonderful characters a superb way of teaching people about the human quality of great brands.

I wonder how many young brand managers on Unilever’s Business Education Programme I have asked to name their favourite Cluedo character? And when Miss Scarlett or perhaps Colonel Mustard were suggested, I asked for a description of their favourite character’s features and personality – this was always an easy task for them to do, and the perfect segue for me to point out that they are in fact describing a red plastic counter.

Music to Sleuth by:

Annie Get Your Gun Irving Berlin

Tristan and Isolde Richard Wagner ( for Kirsten)

The Pasty is a Foreign Country?

/ Paul Christopher Walton / 1 Comment

From the Brand Historian’s Timeline: 1969

It’s 1969, and just as the Lunar Module Eagle is planning to execute its historic Moon landing, the Brand Historian has been playing cricket in Walsall, a town currently located in the ancient county of Staffordshire but about to repositioned both topographically and stylistically in the new concrete metropolis of the West Midlands. And just as Neil takes his giant step for man, Geoffrey Ginster is also about to make his distinctive mark on the universe.

Geoff Ginster has strong family connections with Walsall. His forebears were in business selling horse manure to Black Country foundries whose moulds were made with a mixture of dung and sand. But in 1969, he has left Longwood Lane, taken his share of the family inheritance and driven south-westwards. After a sojourn in Devon, getting to grips with clotted cream and the Milk Marketing Board, he travels further westwards (218 miles from Walsall) in a move that will make his name and fortune.

The pasty is a quintessential English food with an ancient lineage and interesting relatives like empanadas and pirogs. Simply put, a pasty is a baked pastry with a meat and vegetable filling, folded in the shape of a half-moon with a crimped edge to seal it. It has been eaten by people of all sorts, including Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third, and arguably most successful wife, although I honestly cannot remember if Hilary Mantel describes a scene in Wolf Hall in which she and Cromwell share its delights. Shakespeare was also quite partial to pasties and made a rather unsavoury modification to the traditional recipe in Titus Andronicus.

At some stage in its history, the pasty became inextricably linked with Cornwall and by the mid-nineteenth century travellers were raving about, “The Cornish pasty, which so admirably comprises a dinner in itself—meat, potatoes, and other good things well cooked and made up into so portable a form.” It became the food of choice for miners from Redruth to Nevada –always generous, filling, long lasting and convenient.

To return to 1969 and the birth of the Ginster Pasty: Geoff opened his first bakery in a derelict egg packing shed in Callington with a staff of four and a production target of 24 – this we can assume was easily achieved. Ginsters using the proverbial ‘secret recipe’ (this time supplied by a ship’s cook) and offering the punter down to earth honest fill, started to appear in pubs, restaurants and seaside catering sites throughout the South West. Soon Ginster was employing over 30 people and making more than 48,000 pasties.

In 1977, Geoff decided to retire and sold the business to Samworth Brothers, the pie and pastry magnates who successfully built upon his work to create one of Britain’s most powerful and ubiquitous food brands. Ginsters pretty much owns the category and proudly celebrates Cornwall as the home of the Nation’s favourite pasty. It all seems a long way from Longwood Lane, Walsall, but not as far as the Sea of Tranquillity, which that July night I remember looking at fondly from a bench outside the pavilion.

Music for Space Hoppers

Living in the Past JethroTull

Essential Reading Matter:

Children of Albion Michael Horovitz

In a Parallel Universe

/ Paul Christopher Walton / Leave a comment

From the Brand Historian’s Timeline: 1995

Northern Lights, the first instalment of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is an excellent indication of what to expect from 1995. The book is set in Oxford but an Oxford in a parallel universe, featuring settings which are simultaneously familiar but also very different, which aptly also describes the new brands which debuted that year.

eBay radically changed the second-hand auction business and put the e into commerce. DVDs brought digital technology into the mainstream and changed home entertainment forever. Nandos and Lush brought excitement, energy and breakthroughs to food service and personal care. But in a parallel universe, or to be exact in Freightliner Road, Hull, there was also Aunt Bessie’s.

Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire Pudding is one on the most loved British national treasures (voted 10th in the things people love about England in a 2012 survey) and the brand logo featuring her smiling, ruddy complexion is a like a long-standing culinary Britannia, and yet Aunt Bessie is actually only 26, and funnily enough, as old as another celebrated Yorkshire lass, Bridget Jones. Imagine their conversation.

Yorkshire Puddings probably have their origins in making the most of the fat dripping from roasting meats combined with a batter mix of eggs, flour and milk. In 1737, a book written by a knight of the realm with the slightly controversial title – at least by today’s standards- The Whole Duty of a Woman, features an early recipe. 

Yorkshire Puddings combine huge consumer craving with a degree of technical difficulty and bother which makes them a prime candidate for branding. William Jackson, a long-established Yorkshire family business manufacturing and retailing foods had discovered the magic of the quick-frozen ready-to-serve Yorkshire pudding when in the 1970s, it supplied thousands to the happy campers at Butlin’s holiday camps. Own label supply to supermarkets followed and as the mountain of puddings grew, Jackson’s decided to launch under their own brand. 

At a time when British culinary habits were changing quickly, Aunt Bessie’s is a wonderful example of how zigging when everyone else is zagging can be a winning strategy. Just as cultural commentators were talking incessantly in their best pesto prose about the death of the Sunday roast, Aunt Bessie’s showed it was actually in rude health and was indeed going from strength to strength. In 2018, the Great Hull Pudding gravy train departed for the next phase of its journey: the brand was sold for £210m to Nomad Foods, the owners of BirdsEye, where today her range goes from roast dinner staples, to quick and easy midweek wins, to deliciously different carb swaps. Oh, and she has a blog.

Playlist for Bridget Jones and Aunt Bessie’s Girls Night In:

Roll with It Oasis

I Should Coco Supergrass

We 3 Kings of Shaving Are…

/ Paul Christopher Walton / 2 Comments

From The Brand Historian’s Timeline:

1901-1993-2012

From an early age, all good brand managers learn the business facts of life. The two magic words of brand building are Penetration and Frequency. The first is a measure of how much of a particular target market buy or use a product, and the second, how often it is used. Brand bliss arrives when a large target audience, let’s say all men, use a product nearly every day, let’s say a razor. Not surprisingly therefore, shaving is one of the most attractive basic human habits in which a brand can participate, and this explains why in the last hundred years, it has been the subject of relentless product, brand and business innovation, and also some mouth-wateringly expensive acquisitions by the likes of Procter and Gamble and Unilever.

It was King Camp Gillette, the crown cork salesman from the Midwest, who in 1901 created the market for disposable blades for use with his patented Safety Razor. His system wasn’t the first, but the thin, inexpensive stamped blades from carbon steel sheet got great results without the need for a barber and or having to strop a dangerous blade. Protected with a trademark and with his portrait on the packaging, Gillette’s razor and blades grew rapidly and with efficient manufacturing and heavyweight marketing support, Gillette became one of the most definitive fast moving packaged goods brands, eventually acquired by P&G in 2005.

Our second King of shaving is William King, an engineering graduate from Chalfont St Giles* and Portsmouth Poly who in 1993 made a daring assault on the ancien regime of male grooming with a range of innovative new lotions and potions, packaged with a more contemporary look-and-feel and presented with an irresistible sales chutzpa that got him listings with some of the big names of the UK grocery trade. It is never easy competing with the Mega Battalions who control markets, but King of Shaves like many challenger brands had an impact on the category far greater than its market share. Its shaving gels have redefined consumer expectations of shaving preps, and its confident sense of style highlighted the branding vulnerability of the incumbent.

In the last decade, several others also spotted an opportunity in the weakness of the ‘bland’ leader. In 2012, two Bain Private Equity grads launched Harry’s, building on the arrival of the internet to disrupt the market with a direct-to-consumer sales offer and a brand-skin that was decidedly younger and in keeping with the emerging hipster culture of Brooklyn. Harry’s soon expanded into mainstream distribution in the US and in Europe, and in 2019 became an acquisition target for Wilkinson Sword/Schick, one of the Old Guard hardware companies looking for a brand injection.  The deal was valued at $1.37bn before it was blocked by the FTC. In the same year, Harry Kane, the soccer Captain of England became the face of Harry’s, and thus our third King of Shaving to complete this Epiphany of Male Grooming.

A playlist to shave by:

1901 American Patrol Sousa’s Band

1993 Mr Vain Culture Beat

2012 We Are Young Fun ft Janelle Monae

* Some will remember that The Value Engineers had an office in Chalfont St. Giles where one day, replete in leather flying jacket, Will dropped in to see us for coffee.

The Power of Laughter and Scent: Brand Purpose is Nothing New?

/ Paul Christopher Walton / Leave a comment

From the Brand Historian’s Timeline: 1921

A hundred years ago the laughter was returning to France, the economy surging after the calamitous bloodshed of the Great War, and Paris renewing its licence as the creative magnet for artists and innovators of all kinds. Surrealism and ragtime mélanged with Ballets Suédois and the chit-chat of modernist salons like Gertrude Stein’s in the Montparnasse.  It was amidst the chaotic collisions of les Années folles that two iconic French brands made their first appearance.

Léon Bel and Gabrielle Bonheur Chasnel were born within a few years of each other at the end of the nineteenth century, and whilst they came from widely differing backgrounds and had very contrasting experiences of the Great War, they were both exceptionally gifted managers of brands who knew how to deploy complementary talent, great design and technical innovation to great business effect.

Gabrielle is better known to us as Coco Chanel and in 1921, on an eventful journey that had taken her via Saumur, Deauville and Biarritz to Paris, where she was now buying up most of the rue Cambon to sell her hats, clothes and accessories to the well-heeled, she launched her own fragrance and called it Chanel No.5. It became the signature scent of the garçonnes or flappers of the Jazz age.

All of Coco’s life experience went into the creation of her new fragrance. Her English Cavalry Officer lover’s travel kit probably inspired the shape of the bottle; the fragrance was designed by Ernest Beaux, an acquaintance of another of Coco’s companions, Grand Duke Dimitri, who had introduced them in Cannes; and the name itself – one of a number of samples labelled from 1 to 5 and 20 to 24 – had to be No.5 because this number had always held a profound significance for her following her upbringing by nuns at a convent in Aubazine. The Cistercian pursuit of clinical simplicity can be seen everywhere in the Chanel brand’s look and feel, and No. 5 was seen as the elegant antidote to the o-t-t elaborate fussiness of the leading scents of the day.

In a long life worthy of multiple seasons on Netflix, Coco said a number of eminently quotable things, one of which was “A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future”, in this, she displays a natural skill for what today’s Brand Strategists call Brand Purpose.

A hundred years later in Chicago, the Brand Purpositas are active again, this time to unfurl a new campaign for another French brand with origins also dating back to 1921. 

Léon Bel came from the Jura in Eastern France, close to the Swiss border. Léon’s father had a creamery in the town of Lons-le-Saunier, whose principal claim to fame thus far was to be the birthplace of Rouget-de-Lisle, the composer of La Marseillaise. Returning from the Great War, Léon set about transforming the family business into what would become one of the world’s greatest processed cheese businesses. In his defining new product, he blended cream, milk, fresh and aged cheese, particularly comté and pasteurised it to stop the ripening process. He made it versatile and portable by wrapping individual portions in foil wedges and putting them into a small, round flat box. On top of this platform of technical innovations, he added a dollop of brilliant branding by employing as his salesperson, a cow – in fact, a laughing cow.

La Vache qui rit takes its name from the dark humour of the Western Front and a travelling meat wagon Bel saw called La Wachkyrie, an allusion to the Valkyries who in German sagas took away fallen warriors to the feasting halls. In the first packaging design the cow wasn’t laughing, wasn’t red, and didn’t have the now familiar ear-tag portions of cheese but Benjamin Rabier one of the pioneers of cartooning changed all of that and created one of the world’s most powerful food brand icons and helped Bel register one of the first trademarks for a food brand.

Fromageries Bel is now perhaps the world’s greatest house of cheese brands, but The Red Cow remains its star brand and recognising the power of its laughter, the American affiliate has recently announced that the new brand purpose of The Laughing Cow is to Inspire people to choose to laugh at life.

Perhaps in a time of global pandemic, that’s not a bad thought with which to start the new year. Bonne Année from Coco, Léon and from me….

Some music to dance off the hangover:

Beautiful Faces need Beautiful Clothes Irving Berlin