If there are two guaranteed ways to get things done in life its a) Slavery and b) Piss enough of the people off.
Cadbury found out about the latter these past few weeks when they tried to sneakily – and it was sneaky – change the way they made chocolate by substituting cocoa butter with palm oil. Not only did this change the flavour and texture of the chocolate but it pissed off those that who gorge themselves to morbid obesity on the stuff and if there’s one rule of Fat Club it’s don’t mess with a fatties food supply.
It also pissed off the Greenies (and those that look for any cause that will allow them to pretend that they care for the environment) because of the way unsustainable palm oil is obtained. And we all know there’s no bigger set of moaners than Greenies. Students are a close second but surprisingly they didn’t get in on this one.
Cadbury, possibly realising very early on that they had stuffed up, tried their best to make like the brown stuff hadn’t hit the fan. They wheeled out the smarmiest PR man they could find to try and tell us that sales weren’t down and that people – and by that he meant fatties – would soon get over it. They didn’t and the sales for Cadbury dropped, substantially. Whittaker’s on the other hand were quick to announce that their sales were at an all time high and you didn’t need to be a moaning student to work out why.
So this week Cadbury gorged themselves on humble pie and announced that they’re now bringing back the butter, just like Marlon Brando did in Last Tango in Paris. Only he planned to use his for anal sex, which is a lot like what Cadbury were trying to do to its customer base when you think about it.
That night the news broke some sheila from some inconsequential organisation, possibly a Green one, was on the news trumpeting how people power had won the day and how it was the ‘first turn around of its kind by a multinational organisation’. The fuck it was.
Coca Cola had to concede a similar defeat in the early eighties when they changed the taste of Coke. It caused such an uproar that there was an orchestrated ground swell of support against the company that was bigger than any Facebook group you could join today. Eventually, in the face of massive sale losses in the height of the Cola wars Coke did the rightful thing and reverted back to the original recipe under the label ‘Coke Classic’. Eventually that too was phased out and Coke became plain old Coke again. The people had fought back and won.
In more recent times Metallica, the rock band of the same name and in itself a multinational entity, were so moved by the fans dislike of the Load album which they released in the mid nineties that they immediately recorded and released a heavier, more traditional sounding follow up, Reload.
Metallica were no doubt wary of the need to appease the many millions of disgruntled bogans, who are deceptively dangerous when pissed off. Maybe its the years of wearing super taper jeans and the lack of oxygen to the brain that causes it but an angry bogan can often make a weapon out of the most innocent of inianimate objects, like a can of petrol or unwarrented, unregistered Ford Escort.
Now here in little ol NZ we don’t have the numbers to make just such a stand but if enough folk complain loud enough shit gets done. Like the large number of Golden Oldies that complained when TVNZ tried cutting back on Coronation Street coverage some years ago, or TV3s rescinding on similarly trying to dump the TV series Underbelly last year because they figured no one was watching it.
Complaining, making a fuss and a stand, often makes a difference. I think that as a collective massive we don’t pack enough of a tanty to influence more companies that cash in on our indifference to getting shafted up the rusty sheriff’s badge. But not me, I lap that shit up.
I make a point of never returning to places that give bad service. I don’t buy products that change their make up so much that they are not the same product at all and no, I don’t care how ‘new and improved’ the packaging is. When a company tries to pull a fast one like Cadbury on me I take the moral high ground and self impose a boycott on all their products, not just the obvious ones.
My protests might be minor and inconsequential in the grand scale of thousand unit sales but just imagine if we all did that? Imagine if we did that with alcohol, junk food and everything else that shits society right up.
We, like the Cadbury chocolate eating fatties, would get shit done.
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