Heniz Salad Cream: goodbye, hello

A good example of ostensible demarketing is the British staple, Heinz Salad Cream. In 2000 the company pronounced the death sentence on this long-established brand, only to see its fortunes revived.   Salad Cream had been on British dinner tables for nearly a century, but the former market leader had been overtaken by more fashionable rivals such as Hellmann's Mayonnaise.

Losing sales and market share, Heinz annouced that it was going to take the product off the market.  But while in the case of Coca-Cola the consumer 'backlash' came when the product was withdrawn, Heinz was 'persuaded' to give their brand a stay of execution by the consumer campaign which followed from the announcement (Smithers 2010).  Consumers seemed to have rediscovered their love for Salad Cream, and as happened with Coca-Cola, could not imagine life without this national treasure.

A new branding strategy swung into action (Richardson 2001) with the rising tide of consumer goodwill being tapped into with an exercise repositioning of Heinz Salad Cream for a younger audience, including a substantial price increase. Fast forward another decade and the brand's health seems to be secure: time for a brand extension - a new lemon and black pepper salad cream.

The level of detail in this rebranding (pricing, packaging, promotion, distribution) suggests that it had been thought through in advance, in other words that that withdrawal announcement created the appearance of demarketing, while in practice Heinz correctly anticipated the role of psychological reactance theory in re-awakening brand loyalty. This theory predicts that when your ability to enjoy something is withdrawn (or threatened) you will often come to appreciate it more.


References

Richardson, Belinda (2001), “Kitchen classic: salad cream”, The Daily Telegraph, 7 July

Smithers, Rebecca (2010), “Dressing fancy: after 96 years, Heinz Salad Cream gets a new flavour”, The Guardian, 1 September