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YORKIE

BRONZE
Interbrand, J. Walter Thompson

Campaigns for established product brands (under 2m)

sponsor: NABS

The ultimate feminist brand?

This case highlights the brands need to re-create a masculine identity the thought being that what defines masculinity has changed since the brand was launched 23 years ago.

Planned by: Sarah Willan, Ruth Oliver, Interbrand; Sameer Modha, J. Walter Thompson Agencies: Interbrand, J. Walter Thompson Client: Nestl Yorkie

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The ultimate feminist brand?

Yorkie was launched 25 years ago achieving instant success as the first chunky masculine chocolate bar, made famous by the Yorkie trucker. Fast forward to 2002 and sales had not kept pace with affection for the brand. Yorkie still remained a chunky bar and interes-tingly its sales split was still biased towards men, just. Its chocolate competitors maintained a resolute femininity in their communications. Equally, observing the world outside chocolate, it became clear that there was so much shared between the sexes now, from football to beer, that there was little left for blokes to call their own. Put these facts together and there was an opportunity for Yorkie to remain the only truly masculine bar and beyond this, assert its blokes-only credentials.
Our (unreconstructed) past

The original launch of Yorkie, twenty-five years ago, still rates as one of the most successful confectionery launches ever. As the story goes, Cadbury had been shaving chocolate from bars of Dairy Milk for years, to keep them at a particular price, and had pursued this policy ad absurdum, and to the point where the Dairy Milk bar was a sliver of its former self. Rowntree, as it was then, saw the gap in the market and with JWT created Yorkie to fill it; a properly chunky bar of chocolate, with advertising to suit. The Yorkie Trucker, a metaphor for the beefiness of the product, was a runaway success, and twenty-five years on, still resonates within our culture. He made it into the top 100 ads of all time, and young lad-mag journalists cite him with a fondness that belies the fact that they couldnt have been of TV watching age when he was last on-air.
Seduced by a Trucker

Unfortunately, sales of Yorkie never kept pace with this affection for it. True, there was a fantastic spurt at launch, but it was followed by 25 years of long, slow decline, which successive bouts of advertising failed to stop. The reason, perversely, was the reason the brand existed in the first place: the Trucker. Successive attempts to revive, and contemporise the Trucker failed our focus remained on repeating the success of an advertising vehicle rather than returning to the masculinity of the chunky bar itself. This was the brands saving grace. Although liking for Yorkie wasnt matched by the numbers of people actually buying it, we knew that the chunky positioning of Yorkie was still a powerful one because, the pattern of sales still reflected it, years after the event. As recently as a year ago, Yorkie was bought differently from other brands (for example, at petrol forecourts) and had a marked gender split. To an outsider, 55/45 male/female doesnt sound like a lot, but in the context of

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the confectionery market it is a pretty big deal.

Gender trouble

It is worth dwelling on that last point for a moment: 55/45 male/female chocolate consumption. Whod have thought it? Everyone knows women have a special relationship with chocolate, so you could be pardoned for thinking that they actually ate more of the stuff than blokes do. The fact that they dont is interesting. The fact that society still talks about it as if they do, is the basis of a strategy. Indeed, when we looked at the world outside chocolate, we saw the same pattern. In many areas of life, all the way from the inconsequential to the terribly important, we found that the actual differences between men and women were small, but the appetite for difference was prodigious. In fact, the smaller the actual differences were, the greater the need to trumpet them became. On the male side in particular, so much had been appropriated by women from beer all the way to football, that there was little left that a bloke could point to and say thats for me. Problem solved, we thought. Position Yorkie as blokey, and go for that early lunch. Unfortunately, when we tried targeting them directly, the men got distinctly uncomfortable. Positionings that were saying, essentially, Yorkie its for blokes were greatly disliked. They were seen as trying too hard; wanting to be one of the boys, which of course meant that it couldnt be. Thus, where girly chocolate advertising seemed to unite women in some shared vision of swirly silks and soft moans, our ideal of giving blokes a chocolate they could call their own was initially stymied by their reluctance to be seen wanting something hand-in-hand with other blokes.
The magic not

It was when we tried to say who it wasnt for that people got really animated. Under cover of laughing at someone else, blokes could tacitly accept chunky Yorkie chocolate as being for them without compromising their masculinity. Women, meanwhile, had a range of reactions from acceptance (Ill get a Dairy Milk for me and Yorkie for him) to challenge (Ill have one, just because you say I cant). In fact, the only people who bleated about it were the older blokes, who laughed to begin with and then stopped when they got a kicking from their internal thought police. But, you cant say that, can you? What would they say? Ooh thats a bit close to the bone. You might complain that saying who a brand is not for is a classic manoeuvre in the marketing armoury (q.v. Marmite), but in this case, there is a twist. Its not for girls turned out to be a viable thought, precisely because enough has been

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done already in the gender arena for people to know that we cant possibly mean it. Thus Al Murray offering white wine for the laydeez or jokes about women not understanding the offside rule get some of their spice from the fact that they are stereotypes known not to hold any more. Not only that but, as we were to learn, the closer we got to things that were entirely true, the less likely we were to be able to get away with saying them.
The enemy

In creative terms, it was almost as if there were three genders: men, women and girls. The trick was to find stereotypes of girly femininity that we had licence to mock from both men AND women, because no-one had much invested in being that sort of girl anyway. Thus, when it came to briefing, our main task was to point teams in the direction of girly stereotypes that they could exploit. Obviously it is impossible to write we did the briefing in the pub in one of these papers without wanting to slide under the table in embarrassment, but in this case, there really was an important point we wanted to make namely, how female-friendly pubs had become. We had a private-room for a start, in a light and airy Pitcher and Piano with big windows and, get this, handbag clips under the tables. We upped the ante when drinks arrived, and all the (male) teams got froufrou cocktails, whilst the women got pints. One art-director was heard to mutter Hey, hang on, why have we got poncy drinks when youve all got... oh, I get it. Using the venue as an example of something previously for blokes that was now shared, worked well. In addition, and perhaps the most vivid stereotype of the enemy that we used was the one closest to hand the portrayal of women in chocolate advertising from the 1960s to the present day. We had thought for a while that this might be a fertile area, but it was only when we put a bunch of chocolate ads targeting women onto one reel that we realised just how bad things were. It is pure choco-porn. Sensual eating shots, seductive music, lights down low.
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The work

The creative idea followed effortlessly from these briefings, because it became very apparent that the strategy was the idea: Yorkie: Its Not For Girls. From this thought, executions developed easily to work across a huge range of channels and media: sponsorship idents, packaging, print, TV... Posters :

TV 1 : Change
Open on a man and woman walking along the street. His girlfriend is wearing an away shirt. SFX : Street noises. The man takes out a bar of Yorkie and is about to offer his girlfriend a piece, but stops abruptly. We see why as his girlfriend has stopped and has a look of horror across her face. Woman : Oh no. Youre gonna have to take me home. Her boyfriend looks at her wondering whats wrong Man : Why whats wrong? She then points to someone over the road who is also wearing the same away top. Woman : Theres someone over there wearing the exact same top as me. Our man looks at her and shakes his head, before gently placing the Yorkie back in his pocket so his girlfriend dosnt see it. MVO : Soccer AM with Yorkie. Its not for gu-urls. SUPER : Soccer AM logo. Yorkie logo.

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At least as important were the unpaid word of mouth stories and PR that the campaign generated. All over Britain people got into the spirit of the campaign. From the Manchester newsagent refusing to sell Yorkies to women to the House of Commons, where Yorkies were actually hidden under the counter (seriously) and male members had to ask for it by name. Close to 1,000 letters and emails were received by customer service, as Yorkie re-entered the nations conscience, including gems such as: I heard its not suitable for girls. My niece ate one, will she be OK? How dare you say Yorkie is not for Girls. I am eating one now. TV: Game
The inside of a works office. We can see a man sitting at his desk eating a Yorkie. We then see one of his female work colleagues walk up and perch on the side of his desk. Woman : Did you see the football last night? The striker did a googly, which threw the scrum leaving him clear to get a touchdown and score. So he was one under par. Brilliant. Ill have a Yorkie please. We see the man shaking his head before pointing to the door. Man : Not even close. MVO : Soccer AM with Yorkie. Its not for gu-urls. SUPER : Soccer AM logo. Yorkie logo.

Results

Yorkies sales increased 42% year on year. 65% of Yorkies are now purchased by men. Enough said.
How it all came to pass

Finally a few words on the team that delivered the strategy and executed the campaign. As you will have noticed, this paper does not have the usual collection of authors youd normally expect to see heading up an APG entry, but thats because Yorkie wasnt reborn the way brands normally are. Everyone knows how its meant to work: (1) You brief the agency.

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(2) The agency writes some stuff (scripts usually) from which the Planner deduces the branding idea. (3) Branding idea gets written up and briefed to all the clients other agencies. (4) They create work in their own disciplines. (5) Voil. An integrated campaign that, with a bit of luck, will be more than just matching shoes and handbags. This paper illustrates a very different way of working, reflected in its joint authorship. Interbrand did what was billed as positioning work but was actually (since the positioning was already clear) the not for girls branding idea in embryo form. This was then developed by the other agencies, particularly JWT but extending to others, to form the campaign we know today. By doing things this way we effectively shortened the process by months because there wasnt the double-iteration of brief to idea and back to briefing again. This in turn led to economies of time and energy and conclusive proof that planning is the new creative.