Vegemite Contest Draws Protests

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What do you get when you take an iconic food product, change its ingredients and release it under a kitschy new name, prompting cries of outrage and a storm of media coverage: A marketing failure or a publicity coup?

The executives at Kraft Foods Australia, the company that makes Vegemite — the salty, gooey yeast paste beloved by millions of Australians — are still awaiting the answer to that question after a recent experiment with the country’s most recognized food product went awry.

It all began in July when jars of caramel-brown Vegemite mixed with cream cheese began appearing on supermarket shelves with brightly colored labels inviting consumers to “Name Me.” After weeks of secrecy, during which the company sold more than 3 million jars of the new product to a population of just 22 million people, Kraft took an expensive advertising slot during a nationally televised Australian-rules football final Sept. 26 to announce its winner: Vegemite iSnack 2.0.

The reaction was fierce. Vegemite-loving consumers took to the Internet to voice their collective indignation about the name. Thousands of Twitter posts, at least a dozen Facebook groups and a Web site dedicated to “Names that are better than iSnack 2.0” blasted American-owned Kraft for tampering with an Australian icon.

One online commentator suggested that the 27-year-old designer who had submitted the winning name be tarred with Vegemite and forced to run naked through the streets of Sydney “as retribution for his cultural crime.” Others called the name “uStupid 1.0” and “un-Australian.”

After four days, Kraft announced that it would put the name back to a vote.

This time, it put forward six rather more conventional choices — including Vegemate, Snackmate and Vegemild — from which Cheesybite was elected through an online and telephone poll. The controversy quickly died away.

Australians are passionate about Vegemite. Travel almost anywhere and you are likely to find an Aussie with a tube of the brewer’s yeast extract stashed in his bag. Babies are weaned on it. Schoolchildren eat it on sandwiches. Adults revere it as a hangover remedy, a vital source of Vitamin B and a staple breakfast food — spread lightly on hot buttered toast.

“Australian food was really bad until the 1970s: boiled meat and vegetables without any butter or salt. Vegemite was one of the things that actually had any flavor, and that’s why it became so incredibly popular,” said Bill Granger, well known Sydney chef and the author of several modern Australian cookbooks. “It’s one of the only foods that is unique to Australia, and people see it as being quintessentially Australian.”

Similar versions of the product exist elsewhere. Britain has Marmite, for example, but many Australians consider that an inferior substitute.

Even Mr. Granger, who spends part of each year in London, said he always kept a supply of Vegemite on hand for his children.

Simon Talbot, the head of corporate affairs at Kraft Foods Australia, said the company had taken only 72 hours to decide that the iSnack 2.0 name was “not worth defending,” given the level of outrage.

But the furor was already paying dividends: Sales of iSnack 2.0 rose 47 percent during its first two weeks with the name, while sales of the original Vegemite were largely unaffected. (Jars with the Cheesybite name will appear on shelves only after Kraft unloads about 500,000 jars printed with the iSnack 2.0 name — in two or three months).

“In the first week, we were in 15 percent of Australian households, which is unheard of. It usually takes many months to get that sort of impact,” Mr. Talbot said. “Time will tell the success of the product, but to date, the lack of cannibalization of the core product and the level of new uptake indicates that we’re onto a very, very successful winner for us.”

“We asked people to vote on a name, and then we left the room and picked a name that wasn’t the most popular, and that’s where we lost the online consumer in particular,” Mr. Talbot said of the iSnack name. “The underlying success is that we got the mix right: We got the taste right, we got the insights right. The sales data proves that.”

That success has led some to wonder whether the campaign was a carefully crafted publicity stunt; a postmodern rehash of Coca-Cola’s failed 1985 experiment with New Coke, which ultimately served to reinforce consumer loyalty to that brand.

Kraft denies the claim, though Mr. Talbot did concede that the extra attention might have prompted some shoppers to try the product.

“I don’t think that the executives, particularly at a big multinational like Kraft and particularly with Vegemite, would be that risk-taking,” said Paul Harrison, a marketing professor at Deakin University in Melbourne. “When you think about risky marketing or publicity stunts that do happen, they don’t have this kind of underlying threat to the profits of the company.”

Whether the strategy was intentional or not, Gerry McCusker, who has written a book on public relations disasters, believes Kraft’s experience with iSnack 2.0 will become a useful case study in using controversy to “cut through the clutter” of the marketing space.

“Kraft has turned a fairly pedestrian product launch into a matter of public pride and public ownership and affinity for the Vegemite brand,” Mr. McCusker said. “That’s what today’s media thrives on: the conversations, the open expression of opinions, the love, the hate, the passion — and we’re talking about a jar of spread.”

Both Kraft and the marketing gurus agree that the long-term success of the product formerly known as iSnack 2.0 will depend on a simple question: Is it good?

“If people like the taste of it, they’ll keep buying it — if they don’t, they won’t,” Mr. Harrison said. “Ultimately, you don’t want people thinking too much about your brand, you want people to become habitual about it.”