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!