Chocolate guru or marketing extraordinaire?

OK, I’ll own up straight away to watching the latest Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film this Saturday (the one with Johnny Depp in). As expected, aside from some disappointing Oompa Loompas (where's their green hair gone?), it wasn’t that bad. What I didn’t expect was to find that chocolate fanatic Willy Wonka is actually a bit of a marketing guru-cum-futurologist.

I won’t regurgitate the full plot but in a later scene Charlie visits the ‘TV room’ with Wonka and the only other child left on the factory tour, Mike Teavee. They are introduced to Wonka's new machine, the Television Chocolate Camera. This gizmo can take a giant bar of Wonka’s Chocolate and shrink it into a little sample before sending it into millions of televisions across the world. People watching their TVs can then reach in, take the sample and take a bite of the chocolate.

Although Mike Teavee vents his frustration at Wonka for not realising that he’s accidently invented a teleporter, Wonka’s real achievement is creating the ultimate in product placement (at least for the purpose of this blog!).

Imagine sampling the last bit of milk in a Cravendale ad or helping yourself to a Cadbury’s Miniature Hero before Corrie started. Or even watching Corrie and reaching in for a spoon of “Betty’s Hot Pot” – now available in all good pub chains!

Now this is all very fanciful but Rory Sutherland recently made an interesting point about ‘the medium being the product’. He notes that allowing people to respond to a DM pack by telephone or post increased response rates. This, logically, seemed strange as the key question should simply be “Do you want this product or not?” Similarly, low-cost airlines increased their customer base by using online booking - a simple effort to cut costs actually overcame the irritation of being stuck on the phone for half an hour. A simple opt-in box for Gift Aid when donating online has resulted in the generation of more money for charity. There are numerous examples.

Basically, the easier it is for consumers to reply/respond/purchase/taste/etc, the easier it is to sell the product. And Willy Wonka cracked this (well, Roald Dahl really).

TV’s tried telephone call to actions, and online, and even had a dabble with red buttons. But what it really needs is a Television Chocolate Camera. Until then it’s playing catch up with other, newer, media. Just look at those SIM only Orange banners. See the banner on a website, fill in your details without having to leave your site, 3 days later you’ve got yourself a SIM card in your postbox. Awesome.

Until then, anyone for a Smell-o-vision renassiance?