A lot of focus is on what is happening right at this moment. Let's not forget what Yowie was before they were sighted in the USA. Figuratively speaking, they have only one hairy clawed toe in the door. Still a lot more to come one would hope. Personally I am looking forward to Yucky-Mucky-Poo making a comeback. Every hero needs a nemesis. (CEM is to YOW as a Grumkin is to a Yowie, the Yin & Yang, balance in the Natural World)
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]By[/BCOLOR] JENNIE JAMES Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Updated Aug. 13, 1998 12:56 a.m. ET
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]The recipe mixes chocolate, the Australian version of Big Foot and environmental messages. With it, Cadbury Schweppes PLC is winning the hearts and stomachs of children Down Under.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]The yowie is the big, hairy, mythical Australian creature believed to be a cousin of the Himalayan yeti or the North American sasquatch. In their chocolate incarnation, Yowies are about six centimeters high, with nicknames such as Boof and Rumble and Ditty. Each chocolate Yowie envelops a capsule that contains a to-be-assembled miniature plastic animal from the Australian bush, such as a wombat or a koala, and a leaflet with information about that animal. The capsules are filled at random, so children never know which animal they will receive inside which Yowie.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]"The kids are always asking for them," says Wayne Morris, 33, who sells about 120 Yowies a week at his corner store in Winnellie, in Australia's sparsely populated Northern Territory. "Parents buy them just to shut the kids up," Mr. Morris adds.[/BCOLOR] A Market Success
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]By Australian standards, London-based Cadbury is generating big money from its association with the Australian Big Foot. Yowies, which were launched in Australia in May 1997, have captured a 40% share of the Australian children's chocolate market, currently estimated to be A$90 million (US$53.6 million) at the wholesale level. The Yowie recently won the Sial d'Or award in France, presented by an association of supermarket magazines, for being the world's best new confectionery supermarket product launched in 1997.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Cadbury says its success in smaller markets such as Australia and South Africa can bode well for success in the 3.6 billion pounds (US$5.9 billion) U.K. chocolate market. About a third of that chocolate is eaten by children, Cadbury says. And behind the Yowies' save-the-earth message and endearing design is a continuing marketing plan that has redefined the traditional notion of "pester power" -- a product's ability to make children nag their parents to purchase it.[/BCOLOR] [BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Marketing to Children[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Pester power normally revolves around products with simple concepts that aren't too challenging for children, and small price points that aren't too disturbing for the adults who must buy the products. Quite often, such items have a link with existing characters known to the children, such as the Spice Girls limited-edition chocolate bars that Cadbury put on the British market last year for 15 pence each. With 40% of available stock ordered in the first week, the chocolate Spice Girls were "phenomenally successful," said Tony Bilsborough, a spokesman for Cadbury U.K.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Yowies are the complete opposite of this definition; they are tied in with complex environmental issues, and at $A1.50, are more expensive in Australia than many adult chocolate snacks. In addition, it is the chocolate product that is driving the rest of the marketing, and not the other way around, says Trish Fields, Cadbury Australia's business manager.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Children love animals and understand at a basic level the need to protect them and their habitat, Ms. Fields says. Yowies sell despite a high price, she says, because they deliver "something that mum thinks is OK, and placate the child in time for mum to get through the check-out queue." In Australia, home to about 2.5 million children in the Yowie target age range of five to 14 years, 47 million Yowies were consumed in the last year, Cadbury says.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]The idea works for Lisa Clemenger, a 35-year-old mother in Melbourne, Victoria. Ms. Clemenger reads a book called "Nap the Honeygum Yowie and the Fiery Flame-Fanning Grumkin" to her five-year-old son Charles. The book, which is a tie-in to the chocolate Yowies, contains drawings and images of the Australian scrub, and delivers an environmental message to "stop the bad people from burning down the bush and all that sort of thing," Ms. Clemenger says. In terms of visual images and storyline, Ms. Clemenger says, the book is "mesmerizing." Of the Yowies themselves, she says, "the marketing is amazing."[/BCOLOR] [BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Environmental Guardian Angels[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]An Australian artistic team created the Yowie concept and presented it to Cadbury in 1994. Each of the six Yowies has a kinship with an Australian creature and serves as a sort of guardian angel over certain environmental areas. Yowie Squish, a cousin of the platypus, protects the waterways, while Yowie Boof, a cousin of the bandicoot, protects the woodlands.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Cadbury purchased the intellectual property rights, Ms. Fields says, and spent three years planning the Yowie introduction into the marketplace. The company's initial investment of A$17 million to A$20 million included building a new plant to manufacture the Yowie chocolate. The Yowie has a seam in its chocolate to make the creatures easy to break open. "Our market research showed that people really didn't want to bite the heads off the Yowies," Ms. Fields says.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]The Yowie marketing concept continues to unfold; Grumkins, the tree-chomping environmental villains against which the Yowies do battle and which look like "little, very ugly people," Ms. Fields says, are about to appear in the capsules inside the Yowies. With names such as Yucky-Mucky-Poo, Grumkins already are featured in Yowie books, and earlier this year Cadbury introduced them to a wider audience in a A$200,000 three-minute animated television advertisement, the longest one ever made by the company. And it isn't going to end there; the original concept, Ms. Fields says, can be rolled on "for a lifetime."[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Along with Yowie chocolates, there are Yowie books, detailing Yowie duels against environmental problems such as toxic waste, and a Yowie Kingdom map, available for A$4 from Cadbury with four Yowie tokens. Coming in October: Yowie bubble bath and shampoo. With chocolate Yowies now established, Cadbury has started to license out the manufacture of spin-off products; the company sold the Yowie plush-toy license to Coles Myer Ltd., Australia's largest retailer.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Ms. Fields says Cadbury has been "providing guidance [about Yowies] to other Cadbury countries," although the U.K. unit declined to confirm any launch plans. Mr. Bilsborough says products have successfully transferred from other markets to the U.K. in the past; Top Deck, a chocolate bar of half-white and half-milk chocolate, entered the U.K. market from Australia, and Astros, a biscuit-sugar-chocolate ball, was brought to the British market after success in South Africa.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Despite the appetite for the chocolate Yowie in Australia, not everyone is a fan. Rex Gilroy, an amateur field naturalist who runs the Unknown Animals Investigation Centre at Tamworth in New South Wales, says he resents "the idea of big companies using [the yowie] as a gimmick."[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)]Mr. Gilroy claims to have discovered a real yowie skull last year. However, "I would discourage you from going to look for one," says Ms. Fields, who adds that the Cadbury concept is about creating environmental awareness rather than exploiting a creature whose existence has never been confirmed. Luckily, both adults and children in Australian seem to recognize the difference; despite the proliferation of chocolate Yowies, official agencies in Australia such as the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service report no increase in alleged sightings of mythical yowies.[/BCOLOR]
YOW Price at posting:
$1.15 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
