Читать книгу Chocolate Busters: The Easy Way to Kick It! - Jason Vale, Jason Vale - Страница 9

The chocolate companies, just like the nicotine boys and girls, are true masters of the emotional hook, not just on a mental level but also at a physical one. Get the two right and BOOM – you’ve got one almighty addictive winner, a lifelong customer and, of course, several penthouses in Malibu! In fact, the similarities between the tobacco and chocolate industries are more than a little spooky and go way beyond the striking similarity between the Silk Cut colour and that of Cadbury Dairy Milk (have you noticed that?).

Both cigarettes and chocolate have colourful glossy packets, both have used words like ‘satisfying’, ‘lift’ and light’ in their advertising campaigns, both have role models such as the ‘Marlboro Man’ and the ‘Milky Bar Kid’, both have regal or ‘out of this world’ names, such as ‘Royal’ and ‘Super Kings’ in the cigarette world and ‘Mars’, ‘Milky Way’ and ‘Galaxy’ in the chocolate world. In fact, both even have names with Death in the title. There is a brand of cigarettes called ‘Death’ (how nice) and a (how can you describe it?) big blob of chocolate called ‘Death By Chocolate’. Both chocolate and cigarettes have been given to troops in World War II, both have gone to considerable lengths to prove their product is not just safe but has incredible health benefits, and both have one person in common – Philip Morris. Philip Morris not only owns the world’s leading cigarette company, Marlboro, but has recently started buying chocolate companies. They even beat the mighty American chocolate company Hershey to acquiring Freia Marabou, a Norwegian chocolate company with a strong presence in Scandinavia. On top of that, they also once owned and, I understand, still have plenty of shares in Kraft Jacobs Suchard: a company which produces Terry’s All Gold and perhaps the most instantly recognizable chocolate in the world – Toblerone. Toblerone’s slogan was always ‘Out On Its Own’, but next time you have a triangular-shaped choccie, spare a thought for the extra money you’re ploughing into Philip Morris’s pocket, helping to make sure that, on a financial front, they are truly ‘out on their own’. The coincidences don’t stop there either. Even Philip Morris’s ‘Marlboro Man’ was created by Leo Burnett, the same person who came up with the much-loved Uncle Ben character – owned by Master Foods, part of the Mars company.

Such is the power of Philip Morris that they have managed with Toblerone to do what the makers of ‘Sunny Delight’ did with their product. One minute it wasn’t there, the next every shelf was packed with the stuff. Some of the biggest sales for Philip Morris come from duty-free shops in the airports of the world. You can’t but fail to notice the large, gold-wrapped, glossy boxes of … chocolate! Yes, haven’t you noticed that now Toblerone not only has the same colour wrappings as Benson and Hedges cigarettes, but it has also grown just a bit in size? Have you also noticed the shelf space these massive bars of Toblerone have been found? Have a look next time you’re in a duty free – at first glance you would think there is no other chocolate on the planet except Toblerone. And be aware that getting this kind of shelf space is no easy feat – you need more contacts than Specsavers to pull it off … oh, and flipping great wedges of cash too! This is because of the 90% ‘point of sale’ factor – it’s all about being seen.

I always suspected there must be some link between the two ever since I used to buy chocolate cigarettes – when I was just seven years old! If they can make chocolate cigarettes legal for children, I really wouldn’t put anything past them. Forrest Mars was even once a travelling salesman … for Camel cigarettes! It was also partly due to cigarettes that the Mars company grew the way it did. According to Forrest Mars, it all started with a simple suggestion to his father Frank, ‘Why don’t you manufacture something like Camel cigarettes?’ And the rest is history.

There is one other similarity between the two which I forgot to mention – both cigarettes and chocolate can be highly addictive. The chocolate companies, however, like their cigarette industry cousins, will naturally deny this until we are blue in the face, but somehow I don’t think it’s disputable.