Careless Wispas bring brand back

While in the case of  Classic Coke the threat of withdrawal was able to trigger a brand revival, Cadbury's Wispa is an example of where nostalgia for a defunct product was used to resurrect a dead brand.  The chocolate bar in question had been discontinued without demur in 2003, but a social media-based campaign to bring the product back to life in 2008 'persuaded' the company that “consumer passion” (Sweeney 2008) would support a carefully planned relaunch. 

In the event the product became the company's fastest selling product in four years, shifting 12 million bars in the four weeks following its reintroduction.  According to the BBC Wispa was largely responsible for the 11% jump in sales that Cadbury reported in 2008-9, the re-launch year. The company continued to benefit and was able to extend the brand by introducing an ice cream Wispa (Beckett 2011). The Wispa relaunch won Cadbury's an award for advertising effectiveness in 2010 from the IPA. Multiple new variants were then introduced, including Wispa Gold and the product's future seemed assured, even in a crowded marketplace. 

However, nothing lasts forever and by 2012 Wispa was in need of a new boost. Strategic Ostensible Demarketing had worked before, so why not give it another try? Wispa Gold had been withdrawn, but it was then revived in time for the 2012 London Olympics (according to Marketing), where it was linked to the idea of the gold medal. 

This time Twitter was the focus of social media activity, rather than rely on spontaneous consumer pressure: according to Brand Republic, Cadbury's took an active tactical role by managing Wispa Gold through Promoted Accounts and keyword searching. The audience was incentivized by offering a box of chocolate for every reTweet which used the hashtag #WispaGold. A Spandau Ballet classic from 1983 was remixed for Cadbury's and launched as a video and an iTunes download, helping to spread the conversation. The results? Sales figures for this campaign matched those from 2008, 41 million bars selling in 18 weeks.

Wispa is an interesting case: psychological reactance theory predicts that when a product is about to be withdrawn consumers invariably discover how much they like it. In 2008 and 2012 the revival of Wispa and Wispa Gold seem to have been delayed longings - missing a dearly departed friend. It was nothing short of miraculous - two brands brought back to life by ostensible demarketing.


References

Beckett, Alex (2011), “Wispa to hit freezers as Cadbury serves up an ice cream variant”,

Sweeney, Mark (2008), “Cadbury calls on Wispa fans for ad help, The Guardian, 5 November