The marketing of Ready Salted Chipsticks and why it doesn't make any sense!

Marketing. Used everywhere. There is very little in your life that doesn’t have it backing it up. Have a look around you. I work in retail, so there are hundreds of examples for me to see in one glance round my office and I’m sure there is in your world too.

If you’re reading this on a computer, phone or tablet I’m guessing that it was advertised before you bought it, or there are little pop ups coming at you on the side of the page. Jeez-o, even Facebook advertises itself. Advertising is designed to say how awesome you would be if you had something.

How old are you? Male or female? Tall or short? All of these things get pulled together for something called “demographics”. Something that means marketing can be tailored to you and will of course make you look, feel, sound, smell, act, live, work better.

Sadly though, when I spoke to Walkers about why Ready Salted Chipsticks had been discontinued they advised

“There are many reasons why a product is discontinued, but usually it’s because sales are lower than expected…”

When I queried them on their statistics and marketing campaign I got stonewalled.

“I regret to inform you that I am unable to provide you with the specific information and data relating to the discontinuation of this product”

What I fail to understand is that if sales were low, what was done to increase them? With good marketing it is possible to make almost any product desirable. I don’t recall any promotions, adverts, even background shots in TV series to bump them up. Ready Salted Chipsticks were discontinued during a time that retro was “in”, which in my mind was a perfect opportunity and was missed by the Walkers marketing team (we’ll cover this in another blog).

So why, with all this available to them did they not use it? Why were Ready Salted Chipsticks allowed to fade into oblivion? Despite their comments above, I really think that Walkers made the decision to axe them without due consideration of all the options.

Sorry Walkers, but I think it is a case that you are unable to provide me with specific information because you don’t have it. 

Maize vs Potato - Ready Salted Chipsticks are one of a kind

First off let me state maize based crisps aren’t really comparable to potato based crisps. The texture, flavour (even when we’re talking the same flavour between the two, for instance let’s take Ready Salted), “mouth feel” also known as “the way they stick in your teeth and to the roof of your mouth” (so much better with maize based). They are two completely different type of crisp. Personally, as you may have guessed, I prefer the maize based. You can pop one in your mouth and pretty much suck the air out of it rather than chewing. There aren’t a lot of foods that let you do that! 

Why did this cross my mind? One of the many reasons I’m so outraged by the discontinuation of Ready Salted Chipsticks is that there are no equivalent crisps on the market. There are several different varieties of maize based crisps, but none that are even remotely similar. Monster Munch are delicious, especially the flaming hot flavour, but they’re not Ready Salted Chipsticks. I’ve heard rumours that Marks and Spencer have their own brand Ready Salted Chipsticks, but I’ve never been able to find them. There is nothing available in any shop, own brand or not, that is even close to a Ready Salted Chipstick.  

Potato based crisps – there are thousands of them. If you don’t have a Walkers, then a Tyrell’s, Kettle or any supermarket own brand will easily be a suitable substitute. When it comes to your standard potato based crisp it can be much of a muchness. Yes there is a little bit of variation between them, but ultimately you’re not going to notice the difference unless you’re a connoisseur, and more obsessed with crisps than I am (which would instantly make you nuts by the way – completely nuts).  

With this in mind does it not support bringing back Ready Salted Chipsticks and gaining the corner on the market again before someone else realises the mistake and starts cashing in? Be careful Walkers! I think I might start making the suggestion to your competitors – do you want that?!

Why is it so hard to bring back Ready Salted Chipsticks?!

I honestly don't understand Walkers!

Why can’t they just take the vinegar flavour out of the machine?!

Seriously, what is the difference between Ready Salted Chipsticks and salt and vinegar!? I can only conclude that it is just vinegar!

Surely it’s the same process to make Ready Salted Chipsticks, but cheaper, because you’re only using salt! It’s not like they don’t have the means to make them anymore! Is red dye for the packets more expensive than the blue?! You’re still producing all of the basic components!

If they’re really not profitable sell the rights and the recipe to me for a quid and I’ll bloody well make them!

Ready Salted Chipsticks' Mortal Enemy and Why I Hate Them.

It’s a questions that came up from my last post. What’s wrong with Salt and Vinegar Chipsticks?

Well let me tell you! Nothing. There is nothing is wrong with them really. I personally don’t like the flavour, but many people do. In fact my sister does, so we can definitely rule out it being a nature / nurture thing. I actually like people who do prefer the flavour. They leave all the Ready Salted Chipsticks for me to eat.

BUT! For some reason, everyone thinks that flavour is better, and that salt and vinegar chipsticks are better than Ready Salted Chipsticks. This is my main bone of contention with them. Why? Why does adding an acid that makes people’s tongue tingle make them better? It makes them different, yes, but not better.

If it were only that, I would be irked, but I do hold a grudge for another reason. Most people call them by their full title of salt and vinegar chipsticks, and unfortunately Ready Salted Chipsticks often get reduced to “plain”. Now, this was a massive marketing error, which I think many of the crisp manufacturers of the world have been trying to correct for years. Why you ask? Look up plain in the thesaurus. In fact no need, I’ve copied it for you.

Plain (Adjective): ordinary, homely, common, simple, modest, everyday, commonplace, lowly, unaffected, unpretentious, frugal, workaday

Looking through that word association you can see what these were more difficult to sell, but it still doesn’t mean that they weren’t well loved! Walkers sensibly decided not to let this word mar their reputation and went on a campaign to rebrand theirs as “Ready Salted – The Daddy” which was pointed out to millions by Ray Winstone. No one, not even the owners (also Walkers by the way), bothered to do this for poor old Ready Salted Chipsticks. Perhaps this isn’t exactly the fault of poor old s’n’v, but at the end of the day I still blame them for it.

In a world without Ready Salted Chipsticks I am stuck in a dead end job

I can’t remember the last time I had a packet of Ready Salted Chipsticks. I didn’t realise at the time that it would be my last packet. The strong likelihood is that it was Two Packets, because as we all know, there is no such thing as One Packet of Ready Salted Chipsticks.

 

The craving for them has taken over my life somewhat. I never really used Twitter before. I didn’t have anything to say that was of particular interest. Now Ready Salted Chipsticks are all I post about (I’m really hoping it starts trending soon).

I’ve been thinking about getting a new job, so I did a quick search of myself online to see what my profile is and what prospective employers might encounter, and the most prolific thing on there now is my #readysaltedchipsticks. I’m now horribly worried that this will come up at an interview. I can see how it would go…

 

Interviewer: “So, you seem to be very vocal about Ready Salted Chipsticks. Why is that?”

Me: “They are the best crisp in the world, but unfortunately they’ve been discontinued. I’m hoping to bring them back”

Interviewer: (after a brief pause to measure up if I’m insane or not) “But there are still Salt and Vinegar ones, right?”

Me: *RAGE BLACKOUT* in which I can only assume that I ranted at them for 20 minutes on the fact that I don’t love Salt and Vinegar Chipsticks, in fact I outright despise them, and that they are not, never will be or should be a substitute for the wonder of the Ready Salted Chipsticks. I love Ready Salted Chipsticks, and to suggest that Salt and Vinegar are a suitable alternative is like losing your family dog and having it replaced with a goldfish.

Interviewer: (Confirmation of insanity received – WE WILL NOT EMPLOY THIS WOMAN!)

 

It made me wonder if I should bother looking for a new job. Or whether I should wait until the battle is won, and I can once again get the salty corn snack goodness of Ready Salted Chipsticks, making me a calm and reasonable person again.

Fond Memories and Firm Friends - some history with Ready Salted Chipsticks

You know, now I think of it Ready Salted Chipsticks were really in decline from the early 2000s. I really should have started my campaign then. Prevention is better than a cure after all.

 

Why do I remember this? I recall that sometime around the time I moved to Leeds in 2003 that they stopped doing the half and half bags (remember where you got five Ready Salted Chipsticks and five salt and vinegar in a multibag? Kept everyone happy.)

It was also about then that they became hard to source anywhere other than some random newsagents (thanks for trying guys!) and the Co-op. God bless you Co-op, you held out the longest, but I do wonder if you gave up before Walkers discontinued them.

 

This leads me to reveal the way that my friends found out how much I loved Ready Salted Chipsticks. Any time that I was in the vicinity of a Co-op, I would pop in and buy somewhere between three and fifteen bags of Ready Salted Chipsticks. One instance this was just before a movie night round a friends flat, so when I walked in with my tasty snacks (approx. ten bags this time), they mistakenly thought that I had brought a bag for everyone. I stopped mid-step, hesitated; I was wondering how to politely refute this, whist still being able to keep all my Ready Salted Chipsticks and not be judged for being a greedy slob as they watched me eat the entire ten bags during the course of one film. Unfortunately though my face gave some of this train of thought away. It settled itself in an expression that was a mixture of appalled, horrified and conflicted, which did not go unnoticed by the seven or so people in the room. I had to explain how hard they were to come by, and how infrequently I was able to secure such a score. Thankfully I have very forgiving (though not forgetful) friends and the judgement was replaced by a sense of awe of how I could manage to scarf ten bags to myself without batting an eyelid, with the added bonus that no one ever asked me to share again.

 

Since then my wonderful friends have always thought of me when in Co-op, supplemented Christmas and birthday presents with numerous packets of Ready Salted Chipsticks, and once even bought me one of the forty-two bag boxes that you used to be able to get on Amazon. They lasted about a week and a half. Yum.

 

Despite the fact that I know as soon as they come back I am going to buy an entire shop’s worth, and roll in them until I am satisfied, reading this back does make we wonder… If they had been readily available would I be the size of a house by now?

Join the campaign to bring back Ready Salted Chipsticks

One of the main themes of this blog will be my personal campaign to bring back Ready Salted Chipsticks. I also call them the best crisps in the world. We’ll get round to some other issues as we go through, but the pertinent point at the moment is that Ready Salted Chipsticks were discontinued and to prove to the retailers and manufacturers that we need to bring them back, I think it best that we always give them their full title so they can search and see that they are still in demand.

I have developed a three pronged approach to getting this issue into the public forum, using Twitter, Facebook and good old email.

Twitter

There are a couple of approaches I’ve been taking on this.

Firstly trawling regularly through any posts that may contain any of the following; chipstick, chipsticks, ready salted chipsticks, plain chipsticks. If any of these are speaking about Ready Salted Chipsticks, then I retweet them including @walkers_crisps and with the #readysaltedchipsticks. Sometimes this means a little creative editing, but I make sure that the message isn’t changed.

Secondly I’ve taking to messaging the supermarkets @AsdaServiceTeam; @Tesco; @Sainsburys; @CooperativeFood; @Morrisons. I will be trying for more, but thought I would go for the big five for the moment.

Aim: To get Walkers and the supermarkets to realise there is a demand for chipsticks.

Current issues: As I am retweeting the very few tweets that are out there, it is starting to look like a one woman show, plus for the love of me I can’t seem to get #readysaltedchipsticks to trend.

What you can do: Get out there and be vocal. Contact the supermarkets and Walkers yourself. I’ve handily provided their @ addresses above. Retweet anything you find about Ready Salted Chipsticks. Keep using #readysaltedchipsticks. Let’s get that on the radar!

Facebook

There is a page on Facebook called Bring Back Ready Salted Chipsticks. I didn’t make it. I was elated to come across it when my campaign began. Unfortunately it’s pretty badly trafficked and there really aren’t many posts beyond 2012 that relate to Ready Salted Chipsticks. However I decided to co-opt this ready-made page for myself, rather than get start an alternative that could end up being competition.

So I’ve made a couple of suggestions on there that people take their comments onto twitter as well, but as you will be able to see it is also a forum where people can share if there have been any sightings, where alternatives can be found, and general positive comments about the glory of Ready Salted Chipsticks.

Aim: To get people talking about Ready Salted Chipsticks, to share tips and ideas for getting them back, and to support one another during this hard time of deprivation.

Current issues: Not a huge amount of commentary on there at the moment. We need to get more people involved.

What you can do: Join the group (I think it’s protected, but admin can add you at request). Follow any of the advice about getting Ready Salted Chipsticks back into circulation. Just start commenting on how much you miss them. This is a group of kindred spirits that will share your pain.

Email

As I may have mentioned before, I have been in contact with the very polite people at Walkers Customer Service via email. They were the ones that advised me it was *probably* a lack of demand that caused the discontinuation of the product. Unfortunately they were unable to provide me with any further information. Still I think that we developed a bond over those conversations, so I like to drop them a line every now and again, with a new Ready Salted Chipstick titbit, or with a few thoughts, or statistics that they might have missed during their extensive research.

Aim: To raise the profile of Ready Salted Chipsticks with their owner, Walkers Crisps

Current Issues: They don’t really “give” much back. They don’t seem to think that any of my emails are funny (I do try to make them light at least. You can’t go shouting at customer service reps, when it wasn’t them that chose to do this or make the rules)

What you can do: Email them. Here’s the address: consumer@walkers.co.uk As per the above, I’d keep it polite, but if they don’t get back to you, email them again. Or just to have an ongoing dialogue. Once you’ve made friends with them like I have then it seems heartless just to drop out of touch.

As and when I update my approach I’ll make sure that you know of this as well, but for the time being what I think we need more than anything is fresh blood in the mix and a huge raise in posts. If you have any ideas or suggestions that I or others can do then use the Facebook page I said above, or email me, or do whatever it is that you think, but make sure you let us all know. I’m starting a bandwagon, and I want people to jump on!