Looking down the wrong end of the telescope

Are you looking down the wrong end of the telescope at the challenge you face..?

Seeing the new Flora ad with Gordon Ramsay demystifying the process of making margarine with a handful of familiar kitchen ingredients and a blender fills me with pride! Why? In November 2011 while I was in Vlaardingen running a claims workshop for a new spreads concept. The team were lamenting the fact that the dairy category was winning by appropriating the codes of naturalness for their spreadable butter products (cows, fields, green grass, clover flowers etc). The team couldn't see any way back from this for margarine which was increasingly seen as artificial, 'one molecule away from plastic' etc.

I was transported in my mind back to my childhood and the flat round tubs of Vitalite that we started eating in the 80s - the front of the pack was dominated by a huge sunflower. "That's it!", I said, "You're looking at this through the wrong lens ... we're margarine ... we have a direct connection with the sun, the source of all nature..! We need to tell that story again..!". I sketched out a narrative on a flipchart, then after the workshop directed a mood video telling the story of crops growing in fields, pollinated by bees, ripening in the sunshine, producing flowers and then seeds which are crushed to produced the oils which are blended with salt, lemon juice and water to create the spreads we enjoy.

Success has many parents, and I don't take any of the credit for selling this into the business or any of the significant work which built on this flash of inspiration, but I still feel proud of the brilliant way Flora rebuilt it's brand on a plant-forward platform, rather than trying to battle dairy on it's own territory.