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YORKIE

This case highlights the brands needto re-create a masculine identity thethought being that what definesmasculinity has changed since thebrand was launched 23 years ago.

The ultimate feminist brand?

BRONZEInterbrand, J. Walter Thompson

Campaigns for established product brands (under 2m)sponsor: NABS

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

Agencies: Interbrand, J. Walter ThompsonClient: 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 2002and sales had not kept pace with affection for the brand. Yorkie still remained achunky bar and interes-tingly its sales split was still biased towards men, just.

Its chocolate competitors maintained a resolute femininity in theircommunications. Equally, observing the world outside chocolate, it became clearthat 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 beyondthis, assert its blokes-only credentials.

Our (unreconstructed) pastThe 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 beenshaving chocolate from bars of Dairy Milk for years, to keep them at a particularprice, 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 afondness that belies the fact that they couldnt have been of TV watching age

when he was last on-air.

Seduced by a TruckerUnfortunately, 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 focusremained on repeating the success of an advertising vehicle rather than returningto the masculinity of the chunky bar itself.

This was the brands saving grace. Although liking for Yorkie wasnt matchedby the numbers of people actually buying it, we knew that the chunky positioningof 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 fromother 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 troubleIt is worth dwelling on that last point for a moment: 55/45 male/female chocolateconsumption. Whod have thought it? Everyone knows women have a specialrelationship 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 isinteresting. 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 samepattern. 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 weresmall, but the appetite for difference was prodigious. In fact, the smaller theactual differences were, the greater the need to trumpet them became.

On the male side in particular, so much had been appropriated by womenfrom 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 chocolateadvertising 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 otherblokes.

The magic notIt 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, wholaughed to begin with and then stopped when they got a kicking from theirinternal 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 manoeuvrein the marketing armoury (q.v. Marmite), but in this case, there is a twist. Itsnot for girls turned out to be a viable thought, precisely because enough has been

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done already in the genderarena for people to know that we cant possibly meanit.

Thus Al Murray offeringwhite wine for the laydeezor jokes about women not understanding the offside

rule get some of their spicefrom the fact that they arestereotypes known not tohold any more. Not only that but, as we were to learn,the closer we got to thingsthat were entirely true, the less likely we were to be able to get away with sayingthem.

The enemy In creative terms, it was almost as if there were three genders: men, women andgirls. The trick was to find stereotypes of girly femininity that we had licence tomock from both men AND women, because no-one had much invested in beingthat 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 inthis 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 andairy Pitcher and Piano with big windows and, get this, handbag clips under thetables. We upped the ante when drinks arrived, and all the (male) teams got frou-frou cocktails, whilst the women got pints. One art-director was heard to mutterHey, 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 wasnow 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 inchocolate 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 downlow.

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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 thisthought, executions developed easily to work across a huge range of channels andmedia: sponsorship idents, packaging, print, TV...

Posters :

TV 1 : Change

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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 wrongMan : 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 hisgirlfriend 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 thecampaign generated. All over Britain people got into the spirit of the campaign.From the Manchester newsagent refusing to sell Yorkies to women to the Houseof 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 Yorkiere-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

Results Yorkies sales increased 42% year on year. 65% of Yorkies are now purchased by

men. Enough said.

How it all came to passFinally a few words on the team that delivered the strategy and executed thecampaign. As you will have noticed, this paper does not have the usual collectionof authors youd normally expect to see heading up an APG entry, but thatsbecause Yorkie wasnt reborn the way brands normally are. Everyone knows how its meant to work:

(1) You brief the agency.6

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 leavinghim 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.

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(2) The agency writes some stuff (scripts usually) from which the Plannerdeduces the branding idea.

(3) Branding idea gets written up and briefed to all the clients otheragencies.

(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 inembryo form. This was then developed by the other agencies, particularly JWTbut extending to others, to form the campaign we know today. By doing thingsthis way we effectively shortened the process by months because there wasnt thedouble-iteration of brief to idea and back to briefing again. This in turn led toeconomies of time and energy and conclusive proof that planning is the new creative.

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