The Kraft of Cadbury
Good to see the tabloids treating the Cadbury/Kraft story in their normal subdued manner. Anyone getting their news from the healdines might be a bit confused what with so many discussing the takeover by Kraft of Cadbury.
The reality is that Kraft have agreed a figure with Cadbury to take them over, this has to be ratified by the shareholders. To play it down that's like me agreeing to buy your car for a grand and you having to check with the missus to see if that's okay; no-one in their right mind would declare that I'd bought the car from you until the deal was done. Then again are tabloids in a "right mind"?
Anyway the speculation is that we'll lose jobs, we'll lose tax, and Kraft will start making our chocolate overseas to the same high standards as their own. If my taste of a Hersey bar is anything to go by that means Cadbury Dairy Milk tasting like bitter cardboard.
All these things are indeed worrying, but what can be done about it this is business. It's up to the shareholders now and they're expected to get money out of this deal; what are the tabloids offering in exchange?
[Update - Some nice points from Hagley Road to Ladywood the most amusing being that we, the majority shareholders, in RBS are financing the bid by Kraft who will probably downsize the company making many people unemployed that we will have to pay dole to. So given the amount we'll supposedly make back in interest on the loan compared to the amount we'll lose both in tax and unemployment benefit exactly how much will UK plc make?]
8 comments:
UK plc?
As in Public Limited Country? :-D
Seriously, the only thing that confuses me is that Cadbury is a giant of the chocolate world, while Kraft is some little nobody that no one's ever even heard of. How the hell can they afford to do this in the first place??
Heh yep emphasis on the limited less on the public.
As for Kraft "Kraft Foods, the world's second largest food and beverage company".
Do you eat Philadelphia Cream Cheese? That's Kraft. Prefer Dairylea - Kraft.
Drink Maxwell House coffee? Kraft. Prefer Kenco - Kraft.
Ritz Crackers - Kraft.
Got a Toblerone for Xmas - Kraft. Or perhaps a Terry's Chocolate Orange - Kra... well you get it.
Scared yet?
Heh. And here I was thinking that the only thing that Kraft make are those cheap and nasty chocolate products with the plain white wrappers that say Kraft on them in dull red ink. You know, the kind of crap you can only buy at budget basement food stores…
Damn, they're more crafty than Skoda.
I find it curious that Nestlé which is the world's largest food companies seems quite happy to have its name on things, whereas Kraft seem to want you to think that Chocolate Orange is still Terry's.
Krafty.
I'm sure some marketing think-tank has carefully considered this one.
It's rather like that woman on TV yabbering on about “you don't have to be posh to be Priveledged.” No, no you don't. Because Priveledge insurance, a premium brand, is actually just another name for… Direct Line. A budget brand.
It's all the same damned company. They just present two different company images, to appeal to two different demographics. People buy Priviledge thinking they're getting a somehow “better” product, but no, it's actually the same thing.
I noticed one day at Tesco that almost every bottle of fizzy drink had a “Zero” version sat right next to it. On closer inspection, it turns out that all of these competing brands are actually… Coca Cola UK. Except for the handful of bottles that didn't have the Zero version. Those are all unanimously Britvic.
Apparently all the dozens of brands of detergent are all either Propter & Gamble or else Lever Bros.
And don't even get me started on Glaxo. (Or is that Glaxo Welcome? Or is it Glaxo / Welcome / Smith-Kline / Beecham? I lose count…)
Oh gods yes it's the 'I've always bought Terry's Chocolate Oranges' crowd being confused by the fact they're now Kraft's Chocolate Oranges.
Then again it doesn't stop some things - Starburst, Snickers; Snickers! [think calm thoughts, think calm thoughts].
But yeah the brand has a presence in the market so you can't just switch it around particularly if the replacement has a different reputation in that country. In this case the jokes about cheesy chocolate doing the rounds means it'll still have Cadbury's on the label.
Looking at it another way: Red Hat Enterprise Linux is just Fedora Linux with a support contract slapped on. ;-)
(I hear Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was just going to be called Modern Warfare 2, but people didn't recognise it that way.)
On the flipside you get something like "Silent Hill 4: The Room" which wasn't designed to be part of that series until they decided to market it that way and change some of the names to fit with the others.
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