Publicity, and the hope it brings to the Ready Salted Chipsticks Cause

Recently we have had a wave of support in the campaign to bring back Ready Salted Chipsticks. As my more dedicated readers will know (I know you’re out there – you’re just shy), I have a personal mission to make sure that “the cause” is taken up, leading me to start a change.org petition (sign if you haven’t already… https://www.change.org/p/walkers-crisps-bring-back-ready-salted-chipsticks-2) as well as spend a fair amount of time trawling through twitter to find relevant Ready Salted Chipsticks tweets and share them with @Walkers_Crisps and the world in general. 

In the last two months we’ve had a few of wins on this front. Firstly, Matt Lucas, the comedian, actor, writer and singer, and now my personal favourite of all of these things, signed our petition and shared it on twitter. What a great guy!

Following this the Sun newspaper (not my paper of choice, but they’ve given us publicity, so I will put aside my rant at their more dubious publishing decisions for now) decided to write an article about the petition and our recent flurry of uptake following Matt’s involvement. So, for that, thanks the Sun. https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/8720439/thousands-demand-return-ready-salted-chipsticks-petition/

And finally, Metro.co.uk, the online version of the free paper you get on the bus, decided to do a piece about the petition and my personal mission to Bring Back Read Salted Chipsticks. Nothing at all to do with my very good friend who works there finally taking pity on me and pitching the story of course. But a great little piece and one that further promotes the campaign.

https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/05/woman-determined-bring-back-ready-salted-chipsticks-can-help-9822888/

I know you’ll be very pleased to hear at the time of writing we were up to 3685 signatures. 

Now with this flurry of activity I have the faintest of faint hopes that we’ll get what we want, and that Walkers will finally listen and reinstate Ready Salted Chipsticks to their full glory. It’s hard not to hope but sadly as the last few years have taught me, I think I should be realistic that Walkers ears are firmly closed. Still, with your help perhaps we can keep this momentum going and get to a place where it does become a reality rather than a dream. Onward Ready Salted Chipsticksfriends!

Potato Sticks are not Ready Salted Chipsticks

Now I know this goes without saying for your avid Ready Salted Chipsticks fan, but I think the general public need this pointing out.

Quite a lot of the time, when I feel comfortable enough with a person to let them know just quite how crazy I am, and tell them about my world of Ready Salted Chipsticks, they laugh. They call me nuts, and follow the usual line of questioning, “why not salt and vinegar? Aren’t there any own brands? Surely there’s something out there like Ready Salted Chipsticks?” Yuk, No and No are my standard responses.

Then, because I meet quite nice people, they usually spot something called “Salted Potato Sticks”, and they think of me. It’s normally an own brand, or some obscure packet from a corner shop. They pick them up, and gleefully hand me the packet when they next see me. They think that they’ve found something I wasn’t aware of, that they’ve helped to recover a secret gem that will replace the massive gap in the market, and they are proud. I always feel very ungrateful when I have to break their delusion and let them know that these are not Ready Salted Chipsticks, or even a close approximation.

They’re potato sticks. The most disappointing “stick” there is. It’s like someone crushed a bag of ridge cut crisps and sold them off. Small matchstick shards of potato, which sadly are nothing like Ready Salted Chipsticks.

I’m never sure which one of us is usually more disappointed. I know what it’s going to be, and as lovely as it is of my friends to think of me, they aren’t going to provide me with a magic solution. My friends are only acting on kindness, and not trying to one up me in the discovery, but they seem so dejected on being told that this is a common misconception and they have fallen into the trap. There’s only one way to stop this shared gloom that arises from the very misleading potato stick. Walkers – do everyone a favour and bring back Ready Salted Chipsticks!

Dream a Little Dream of Ready Salted Chipsticks

Hello faithful reader! 

It’s been nearly four months since my last post, which I had hoped would inspire some of you to get out there and start making noise. This does not seemed to have happened. I’ve not been able to find any new sites or groups dedicated to the deliciousness that are Ready Salted Chipsticks. 

Personally I have over 250 tweets to Walkers’ Crisps about this (each of them pointedly ignored, but that should not deter us!). 

The Change.org (see link https://www.change.org/p/walkers-crisps-bring-back-ready-salted-chipsticks-d2da14d3-7ad0-47ea-9d1a-2411195ea5e4 )

is at 932! So let’s get that to 1000 in a swift style and Walkers will be notified. It’s not millions but it’s a good start! 

We still need to do more though, and it will take many voices. Keep pestering Walkers’ and hopefully the will relent. 

It’s been a long four months. Child’s father wouldn’t let me name her Ready Salted Chipsticks, so sadly won’t be getting any publicity that way. She’s still being a baby most days, which has obviously left me with many a sleepless night. However I have managed some rest and during one of these nights I had a lovely dream, in which we found a perfectly preserved newsagents from the 80s. It had all the firm favourite snacks and sweets and among them, of course, were Ready Salted Chipsticks. In the dream it took me a few minutes to realise they would be there and when I found them it was an emotional rollercoaster of joy and sadness that there weren’t more than there were. Still it was a good dream! 

I encourage you all to keep dreaming the good dream, but shouting about it as hard as you can! 

Ready Salted Chipsticks will keep marching on!

Well readers, today may be my last blog for a while. As I take a short break for maternity purposes I am wondering what to leave you with. We’ve covered so much over the last year, that I barely know what’s left, apart from the empty space in my stomach that still wants filling with Ready Salted Chipsticks (that isn't filled up with baby right now).

I could go over again that my friends will have a gap in their gift buying for me come Christmas, or that Walkers and their pointless campaigns keep smacking us in the face, how we can come up with better marketing or perhaps try and develop our own recipe and brand for consumption.

All in all I feel I may just be covering old ground. But what’s new? Walkers continue to ignore any attempt to engage with them about bringing back these excellent snacks, despite the growing popularity of the Change.org petition(link below if you’d like to sign…)

https://www.change.org/p/walkers-crisps-bring-back-ready-salted-chipsticks-d2da14d3-7ad0-47ea-9d1a-2411195ea5e4

Google searches for Ready Salted Chipsticks are beginning to bring back the sites and campaigns I am already dedicated to. Am I the only person on this bandwagon? I know that there are people who sign the petition and make comments on twitter, but all in all there doesn’t seem to be an activist frame of mind with the typical Ready Salted Chipstick lover.

I need you to hop on, and start making more noise! Walkers are not going to relent if they think it’s one woman on her soap box. Start telling your stories, memories, frustrations! I want to find new items and groups, pages and sites dedicated to the cause, and I need you to make them! Send me your links, addresses and handles and I will make sure I give my support to them all. Let’s make this happen together! 

Good luck in your endeavours and I will update you all on everyone's progress when I am back!

Choosing Ready Salted Chipsticks and Still Losing Ready Salted Chipsticks

Well it’s about time to have another rant at the owner of Ready Salted Chipsticks, Walkers Crisps.

I’ve mentioned before that their marketing strategy is obfuscated*, and that they are appalling at responding to customer feedback. These two factors have not stopped them from launching two wholly awful campaigns.

Campaign #1

This was around October 2015, and the tag line was: 

“Your old favourites are back! Vote for one to stay…”, whereupon they advertised that the Beef and Onion, Cheese and Chive, Barbecue (at least spelt correctly), Toasted Cheese, and Lamb and Mint flavours were back for a limited time, and that you have the chance to vote for one of them to stay permanently. It also advised that you could vote as many times as you wanted, so presumably this could be one hundred times for one flavour or once for each flavour. Now, as Beef and Onion are still in production I assume that this flavour won the “competition”.

At the time (which was a year before I started this blog) this was a slap in the face for someone who was pestering them weekly for the return of Ready Salted Chipsticks. Especially as they headed their communications:

“You’ve asked and we’ve listened”

That was a bare faced lie. If you had listened to me (and I know I have voted multiple times from Ready Salted Chipsticks) they would have been in your returned crisp list, not sodding lamb and mint. Ew, and I mean that with all sincerity, and with all my heart, ew.

Walkers – you failed.

Campaign #2

This week has seen the launch of “Choose Them or Lose Them” where they have pitched some traditional favourites against some really left field flavours to get the public to decide which ones to keep. Therefore at the end of this “competition” we will either have:

• ·        One of Smokey Bacon or Bacon and Cheddar
• ·        One of Salt and Vinegar or Lime and Black Pepper (this one deserves an “ew” as well. I mean seriously, is there even a competition in this one?!)
• ·        And one of Prawn Cocktail or Paprika

I feel for those poor random flavours, as they are not going to stand up to the traditional and well-loved standard ones. I’m also really intrigued as to what actions walkers will take from these. Will they indeed reduce their varied portfolio of flavours by three?

Both of these campaigns have led me to be critical of the approach that Walkers take to how they choose what should be in their product range.

For campaign #1 there could have been 100 people asking once for Cheese and Chive to be kept and 1 person asking 101 times for Beef and Onion.

For campaign #2 there is no rationale behind why they selected those particular flavours and what on earth are they going to do if in some strange voting glitch, where one can only assume that Russia had a hand in the fixing of results, that Lime and Black Pepper beat Salt and Vinegar?! Get rid of one of their top tier flavours I doubt it.

So, we know that their voting system is flawed, and that it doesn’t matter anyway as the voting is fixed or at the very least pre-determined by their sales figures.

It’s all a massive marketing bluff, and the sad fact is that it will work. The even sadder fact is that they didn’t even attempt anything similar with Ready Salted Chipsticks to help boost their sales, which they still state were low enough to discontinue them, but cannot provide the statistics to back this statement up. They didn’t try, don’t listen, and will get away with this as no-one really knows it’s Walkers and not Smiths who are driving the decisions.

Kudos Walkers – you have now reached bond villain level in my mind as you sit there laughing at our misfortune, counting your precious pennies, and trying to figure out how best to destroy our soul next.

*This is one of my favourite words, as it is what it means. I do have a tendency to use this ironically and forget it’s a bit of a knobby word. 

Think of all the people who might never get to try Ready Salted Chipsticks

Firstly I’d like to apologise for my prolonged absence. Whilst Ready Salted Chipsticks are a large part of my life, they are surprisingly not the only thing in my life.

A few months ago I discovered I was now a human incubator, and have since been concentrating on growing another little person. It was not the most conducive to ploughing forward with my never ending campaign to get Walkers to rescind their decision to axe the best crisp in the world, Ready Salted Chipsticks.

Until I realised this; my child, not yet born, will never know the enjoyment of Ready Salted Chipsticks, and my heart broke. Everyone wants the best for their children, and wants them to have everything they’ve had in life and more. And this poor blessed thing will never know that joy.

For goodness sake Walkers! Think of the CHILDREN! You may have a few years until mine will be big enough to eat salty goodness crispy snacks, but there are some out there now, who are deprived. They don’t know how good the world can be, and have never been able to experience the taste and texture that has brought such ecstasy to millions. Have a heart and bring back Ready Salted Chipsticks.

Even Ready Salted Chipsticks Champions need a break sometimes

To all my very faithful readers (I'm assuming you're out there! 😉)

My apologies for being slack in keeping you up to date with the ongoing saga that is the battle to reinstate Ready Salted Chipsticks. I'll explain this one later, however in the mean time if you'd like to show your continued support to the cause I have found this...

https://www.change.org/p/consumer-walkers-co-uk-bring-back-ready-salted-chipsticks

Please feel free to follow the link and sign!