Supermarkets in New Zealand are jumping on the band wagon (or is that ‘bag wagon’) in a concerted effort to save the planet – or so they say – by charging for plastic bags at the checkout.

Their rationale is to save the planet from the evils of plastic landfill and it’s production. They are now charging around 5cents per bag to encourage us to become more frugal with our plastic bag usage. Profits of course go to charity.

This raises a few questions – firstly do we really feel warmer to our local supermarket because of their environmental conscious, or do we feel ripped off by their tact to charge us for what used to be a cost of goods sold by them (like the wages, rent and car parking spaces?) Remember the profit goes to charity, not the entire cost, so we are now paying for the cost of the bag.

If my bag tears and my groceries spill to the ground, since I’ve purchased the bag can I now get it, and my damaged groceries replaced, seeing as they sold me the item, and not gave it to me?

Pak ‘n’ Save, a low cost, pack your own groceries market, already charges for bags, but for the cost cutting reason, not the environmental one (that’s just an added bonus), as it’s in their brand promise.

If they are so worried about landfill, should they also encourage me to not grab the plastic bags in the vegetable department? Should they encourage their suppliers to use less fancy packaging?

Remember business owners, if you make a brand promise, in this example an environmental statement, it needs to flow through to every aspect of your business.

Maybe we should switch to paper bags…

As a small business you often look to the big companies to see what they have done to get where they are. But do these larger businesses really look outside their structure for better ways of doing things? I realise for a large corporate to change their systems, or services, that this could open a big can (and expensive) can of worms, but is it really safe to keep your head in the sand, no matter the size of that head?

Then there is the other end of the scale, a big corporate like Cadbury decides to change the recipe of their core product to ‘improve it’. Knowing that change is a costly and daring undertaking, one would think they would arm themselves to the hilt with due diligence. The best example of changing a recipe of a core product is Cola Cola. As a totally reactive measure to the ‘Pepsi Taste Challenge’ the changed their recipe. Unfortunately they didn’t realise that though 9 out of 10 preferred the taste of Pepsi (or whatever the Pepsi-researched stats were) their consumers still went out and bought a Coke. This was met with great protest from Coca Cola fans (lesson one, don’t p*ss off your core followers to please the so-called masses) resulting in the Coke recipe being brought back, and the new recipe becoming New Coke.

Following Coke’s recipe changing disaster, which become the favourite story of branding gurus everywhere, surely Cadbury could have seen the writing on the wall should they decide to change their recipe ‘for the better’. Or do the big companies look at other large corporate failures and think they can do it better? Whatever the reasoning, Cadbury changed their recipe to contain less cocoa butter (what makes the chocolate, chocolate) and more palm oil, to stop it melting as quickly. Bundled with this they changed the look of the chocolate (wider, flatter squares), the wrapper (now cardboard, no more satisfying slicing open the foil with your thumb nail, now it’s like opening a box of anything other than chocolate) and it’s now a smaller size!

Surely changing the recipe to one that is less inclined to melt in transit is a lot harder than changing your supply system? Or if it is easier, you’re now asking the consumer to swallow (ha ha) the change, the one that really matters in the transaction.

This story has ended with Cadbury reverting to it’s original recipe, and doing a lot of brand repair. Though when I think about it, the other changes have not made as much as a stir with consumers. Which leads me to think that maybe Cadbury has had a slight of hand and distracted it’s consumers with the recipe fiasco in order to have these other changes go unnoticed (remember people, they now have smaller blocks, which is harder to spot with a change in the visual presentation of the way it’s pressed into pieces). If we’d noticed the price go up, rather than the size go down, hard times may tempt us to choose an alternative to our Cadbury choc fix.

But that’s ok, because we, the people, were heard, and changes were made…

We’ve got a ‘citizens initiated referendum’ coming up on a hot topic – to smack or not to smack – your children. No matter what side of the fence you sit you can’t deny the one-sidedness of the question we’re being asked to vote on. It says:

“Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”

That’s it. No punctuation, no option, either you agree with the statement or you don’t! It’s interesting that the process in which the anti-smacking bill came about was as bias as this (it got snuck through virtually overnight), so you’ve got to see the humour in this perceived swing in position! But is it a swing in opinion, or just laziness in the form of a poorly written question? Our government has spent a lot of money promoting this referendum, surely they could afford a copy writer to ensure the question made sense?

This one line incorporates a couple of questions, so what one are we answering?

“Is a smack part of good parental correction?”
“Should a smack be a criminal offence?” or,
“Should we be arrested if it is deemed bad parental correction?”

To go further, (because I can) – does a smack really correct the parents?

So if a big agency can make this error, what about the small business? With all the expense and time you put into your campaigns, have you stopped to check your headlines? I’m sure you know what you meant when you write them, just as I’m sure the organisers know what they meant when they wrote this referendum question, but it’s not them that make the vote. If they’d passed this by the person in the street to read first, I’m sure they would not be coming under as much fire, and we could focus on the view, not the literature.

Vegemite, that black tacky malt extract that, unless you’ve grown up with it, is about as appealing as a plate of snails is to a Kiwi (New Zealander).

The makers of Vegemite, Kraft, have released a new version of the spread, as yet unnamed. So what will this do to the beloved Kiwi and Australian staple?It will be interesting to see, but lets look as past new takes on an existing favourite and see what happened.

As we all know, Coca Cola tried it with ‘New Coke’, when they tried to compete with Pepsi on flavour. They went to the market, asked for feedback and were ‘told’ that three out of four blind taste testers preferred the taste of Pepsi.  So they changed the product. What happened? There was such a huge uproar from Coke fans, they had to release the ‘improved’ flavour as New Coke.

Coke have also provided us with other variants on their core product, Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke and Coke With A Twist (of Lemon), all of which are no longer on the shelves.

I’m not saying there is no market for these off-shoots of a brand classic, I for one loved Cherry Coke and indulged in one, every once in a while as a kid. But though the masses have spoken and said they’d like a “cheesy, buttery” version of their old favourite, will it really be the same. Will it be enough to warrant buying a jar of the new spread? A spread that currently lasts in your pantry for a millennium, consumed a teaspoon a day – as there’s no overzealous toast-smothering with this flavour-packed breakfast staple? Do we now have to take up precious jam-shelf space with another variant?

Time will tell, but in the mean time I’m sure the battle will continue between that and it’s Kiwi-cousin, Marmite. It’ll be interesting to see if they follow suit.