04 Oct 2012 UK: Cadbury Crispello – a new chocolate bar for women
Mondelez International/Kraft has launched a new Cadbury chocolate bar aimed at women in an attempt to win back lost sales among the diet-conscious.
The Crispello is the first new chocolate bar launched by the company since the 1990s and will be backed by a £7-million advertising campaign.
Industry research shows that annual sales of single chocolate bars have fallen by some 6.6 per cent in a market worth around £800-million a year.
Evidence suggests that this slump is almost entirely caused by women buying less chocolate.
Cadbury believes the Crispello will particularly appeal to women who are worried about putting on weight.
The new bar comes in at 165 calories, compared with 260 for a Mars bar. The Crispello, which is similar in taste and consistency to Ferrero Rocher chocolates, has three chocolate-covered wafer shells with a soft milk chocolate filling.
It is designed with a resealable pack so it can be eaten one piece at a time.
Some comment from The Guardian’s Karen Homer:
News that Cadbury’s is about to launch its first new chocolate bar since the 1990s could be seen as a cause for excitement – are we about to see a new confection clasped to the nation’s bosom?
I fear not, for Crispello (a name that, like Nigellissima, surely no one but marketeers think has a purry appeal) is aimed squarely at a female demographic, and specifically at weight-conscious women who have been shunning chocolate altogether and who are blamed for a 6.6% slump in the £800m annual single chocolate bar market. Kraft, Cadbury’s parent company, says the bar will be ” … a lighter way to enjoy chocolate”, (isn’t that Maltesers?) marketed under the tagline “a little treat for you.”
Crispello, a mix of wafer and chocolate from the Fererro Rocher school of confectionery, clocks in at 165 calories in 3 re-sealable packages, so that women can help themselves to “a little at a time rather than in one go”. Hmm. This is reminiscent of the campaign to replace king size bars with “duos”, an “anti-obesity” initiative whereby big bars were split into two so that you could save one for later or share with a friend. Did anyone ever do that? And while Crispello’s 165 calories might be nearly 100 calories fewer than 260 for a Mars, a Flake has only 180.
As the Flake reminds us, chocolate has long been marketed at women, but mostly from an angle of sensual indulgence and least subtly in 40 years of adverts where the boundary between sensuality and sexiness has been blurred more than once. Men are not exempt, either: who can forget Yorkie’s 2002 campaign where the brand positioned itself as “not for girls,” complete with images of hunky truckers manfully breaking off chunks supposedly too large for the delicate female mouth.
Alcohol marketing, traditionally aimed at men, is also now turning its sights on female drinkers. Spritzers such as Carlsberg’s Eve and the female-orientated beer Animee have appeared over the last couple of years to much scepticism that a few products could override years of brewers’ advertising campaigns which alienate women…..