Odd as they are doing multipacks 8? and normal boxes 12 via a new e-commerce channel?. If they had " breakages" with in store walmart now they are going to ship - ecommerce? Have they redone a ecommerce packaging solution?
Travelpacks- guessing they have manufactured and haven't yet penetrated travel retail at airports or at WHSmith stores that I can find so putting em through their ecommerce store?? I am surprised there is not penetration in UK via co-op due to small store format or asda ( walmart link but now sold to sainsburys) .
Has anyone seen sales in UK after trials?
In Canada and Australia they say they are going to do more aggressive pricing and promotion across all categories. In the presentation they also so they are cutting promotion costs? - redirecting $ different strategy hoping to be more effective at a lower promotion cost?
This is another change in strategy - just who ? in europe has whole of market reach- so yowie just be the manufacturer ? Market Opportunities-
Europe with a bigger and broader approach rather than country by country distributor relationships
For a little fun n history 1998
NEWS ARTICLES
Melbourne Weekly Article
"Melbourne Weekly Article - April 7-13 1998"
STORY BY: EVERARD HUNDER
It may look like just another chocalate snack aimed at impressionable kids, but its creators claim Yowie could change the world. It's a typically drizzly day in August 1994. A taxi pulls up to the kerb outside the St Kilda Rd head office of Cadbury Schweppes. As the passenger leaps out he asks the driver to keep the meter running. He'll only be a minute, he says.
Dodging the rain, the man runs into the building, finds his way to the lift and ascends to the 18th floor. A couple of executives are waiting for him. They walk him to the boardroom. Though man is here to pitch an idea to one of the largest multinationals in the world, it's the executives who can hardly contain their excitement. The man is Bryce Courtenay, legendary advertising guru and best selling author. Though he can lay claim to having invented Louis The Fly, and though he has spent most of his professional life pitching wacky ideas to men in suits, he later says he is "messing his pants" as he enters the room.
Courtenay gets straight down to business. He speaks quickly and passionately. He talks about merchandising opportunities, he talks about collectibility, he even mentions the environment. Halfway through his sales pitch, the company marketing manager calls a halt. Courtenay shrugs his shoulders in resignation, begins to pack up his papers, and prepares to thank the executives for their time. Then he notices something strange. The head man has thrown an open cheque book on the table. He's also sent word for the CEO to drop whatever he's doing and come down and hear this amazing idea. Cadbury is sold.
Before they can start working out a deal, though, Courtenay has one other piece of urgent business to attend to. He exucuses himself, takes the lift to the ground floor, darts outside into the rain and pays a rather bored looking taxi driver.
And so the Yowie phenomenon - a million-units-a-week chocalate bar, a fierce trade in small figurines, a series of books, a television series and a film (both in the works), and a school education campaign all rolled into one - was born. If you believe the official line, that is.
Not for nothing is Bryce Courtenay Australia's highest-paid novelist; the man knows how to spin a yarn. But however much embellishment there may or may not be in that tale, Courtenay is the first to admit that it only skims over the truth of Yowie's troubled genesis.
As Courtenay repeatedly tells anyone who'll listen, the idea wasn't even his. Fellow advertising man and long-time pal Geoff Pike conceived Yowie, carried the idea inside him for over a decade, struggled to give it form and only called Courtenay in at the 11th hour when all else had failed. "It's really not fair that he happens to have a partner who is better known than him", says Courtenay. "I don't deserve the credit, I don't want the credit. He should have it."
But Courtenay is a spin doctor of the highest order. Whatever he touches, it seems, turns to news. This was nowhere more apparent than at a press conference held at the Melbourne Zoo in February this year, called to announce a Yowie-sponsored environmental education campaign for victorian schools. Courtenay held the audience spellbound as he talked about crazy advertising pitches. He yelled, he whispered, he jumped up and down. The media loved it.
As Courtenay whipped the photographers into a frenzy of flashbulbs, Geoff Pike sat, arms folded, in the front row. When an official from the Department of Education congratulated all involved in Yowie, he mentioned the names Courtenay and Cadbury, but not Pike. As the photographers asked for some posed photographs, one asked, "Who's the guy in the beard?". "He's the inventor of the Yowie," replied a fellow snapper. "Oh," said the first. "Well, do you reckon we could get him out of the shot?"
Yowie is the biggest thing to have happened to the confectionery industry in Australia. Ever. Four years ago, Cadbury's share of the $80-million-a-year children's confectionery market was melting faster than a chocalate bar in the sun. The company had tried gimmicky products to lure the yougsters back to the fold, but it was the imported Kinder Surprise towards which it repeatedly cast an envious eye. And that's when Pike and Courtenay entered the scene, with their pitch for a chocalate bar moulded in the shape of a mythical bush creature called the Yowie, all wrapped around a plastic bubble containing an assemble-it-yourself native Australian animal figurine. It was precisely what cadbury was looking for. But before the product could be marketed it needed to be made. And Cadbury wasn't even sure it could be made. It certainly didn't have the machinery to do it; while it was one thing to adapt a Flake production line to make Twirls, the Yowie project called for a whole new set-up. And that meant money - about $10 million dollars of it.
Management was understandably reluctant to wager such a huge sum on a hunch. The idea was sent out to research. A crack force of hardened seven-year-olds assessed the idea, the designs, the plastic prototypes. "Oh, they've got stupid looks on their faces," cried the testers.
Cadbury went back to the drawing board. They then gave the six Yowie characters more personality; they tried giving them bigger ears and bigger feet, as the kids demanded, but found it impossible to manufacture them to those ungainly specifications. They made the foil packaging work harder for them, putting more character detail there rather than in the chocalate itself (after all, the foil might be contemplated for days, or even weeks, on a shelf, but the chocalate would have to only stand a few seconds of scrutiny before disappearing into some hungry mouth).
Finally, they had a workable package. Research co-ordinator Sue Cummings told Cadbury the results she was seeing were the best of any product in her 20 years working with children. "We hammered Cadbury quite hard," she says. "We told them: 'Don't compromise on this. You are onto a winner."
But still there was no money. The Australian board approved the project, but then it had to go to the UK for the final nod. It came - two years after Courtenay had taken that fateful ride upstairs in the lift - and Yowie was launched onto an unsuspecting public in May 1997. In October, a Business Review Weekly survey of marketing managers and advertising executives judged Yowie the smartest new product, ahead of the likes of Nintendo 64 and Tamagotchi.
"It's war out there, mate," says John Birkett, wiping a bead of sweat form his brow. The 43-year-old zoo keeper isn't referring to feeding time in the lion cage; he's talking about the fierce competition for the hard-to-get items among the 56 figurines in the Yowie range.
He's just managed to complete a set for the Zoo, but his methods weren't always orthodox. "I had to do a lot of things I can't tell you about," grins Birkett. The toy yabby came in return for a crocodile-feeding session ("a great trade," he gloats). The grasshopper was handed over by an eight-year-old boy in exchange for a covert meeting at which the head of a black headed python was stroked. And then there were the figurines that came only through the relentless eating of chocalate. Birkett claims he's eaten over 200 Yowies - at $1.50 each - in his search for the more elusive critters. The yabby, the sea lion and the Christmas Beetle, for instance.
That some are more difficult to find than others is undoubtedly a key to the collectability of Yowie figurines. According to Cadbury, nothing of the sort was ever intended; nontheless, a few supply glitches have meant some of the critters became more prevalent than others.
There are now 14 registered Yowie clubs, and some of the rare figurines have changed hands for up to $100 a piece. A complete set was recently advertised in The Trading Post for $580 (which would represent a 300 per cent return on investment), but at last report it hadn't sold.
Francine Allen has agreed to take het two sons to a swap meet. It's a Thursday night, and the meeting is at the Boronia Mall newsagency. Zane, eight, and Troy, 12 each hold a Tupperware container full of Yowie figurines. "Where are they?" asks Zane. "Soon," whispers his mother and her two duaghters. The newcomer smiles at Francine, and Francine smiles back; then, like lawyers swapping contracts they start to negotiate a trade on behalf of their "clients".
Zane spots a carpet python and a platypus in the girls' container. He needs them for his collection, but he knows it's goinf to cost him. The girls are in the more powerful position: they already have two complete sets, and are only interested in the rarest creatures. Francine offers a dollar. No way. Two dollars? Getting closer. Three? Sold.
While the bargaining is going on, another child in a black T-shirt walks around asking, "Who wants to buy Boof?" (a figurime version of one of the Yowiea). "How much?" asks another. "Fifteen dollars." "Too dear," scoffs the inquirer. "Okay, what about nine - no eight?" And on it goes.
Marcia Ockwell, 24, walks in with a huge cardboard box filled with swaps. "I want to get rid of them," she cries. "I'm sick of them hanging around my house. "She says eaten more than she rather admit, and says her car would be paid off if she hadn't met Yowie. Six children bury their heads in the box, pushing and jostling. Blacl snake, bandicoot, platypus, Nap, Boof - the jingle of coins and fast dealing hands creates an efficient trading system.
Meanwhile, Clint Sim, a red-haired 13-year-old, sits alone in the foyer. He puts a foil-wrapped Yowie to his ear and rattles it. He claims he can tell what animal is inside by the sound the capsule makes.
"That one's a grasshopper," he says putting it down. He picks up another and shaes it. "No way," he says as he pulls out his wallet. "It sounds like the yabby, but it could be the emerald wasp." He rips open the foil, munches off the Yowie's head and fishes out the capsule. His eyes light up: it's the yabby. "That's worth $80," he says excitedly. Trophy in hand, he offers the chocalate to the other collectors. No one wants it. "I'm so sick of them, he says as he reluctantly takes another mouthful.
A latecomer boasts that he has the entire set of figurines, even though they have not yet been released. He says his mother works at the Cadbury factory, and brings them home for him. They all ignore him. Everyone claims to know someone on the inside.
Despite the excitement, there are signs Cadbury may be guilty of a spot of bad timing. A bearded man who watches the swap meet with detachment (he's already got the full set) says Cadbury should have released more creatures sooner. He's seen the swap nights go down from collectors down to tonight's dozen or so. Last week there were even fewer.
Cadbury is listening. It is about to launch another 20 creatures, and has 106 planned for 1998. Rumoured to be coming are the white pointer shark, cassowary, fresh-water crocodile, black wallaroo, mapie, bottle-nosed dolphin, whale and funnel-web spider.
The conspiracy theorists aren't so sure, though. One Internet devotee suggests that series twomis a long way off, as Cadbury "has a heck of a lot of series one to clear". Another Yowie site warns of fakes doing the rounds: apparently, someone is taking advantage of the demand for quirky variations in finish by dipping the figurines in a solvent to render them transparent, passing them off as factory freaks, and flogging them for $50 a pop.
However you look at it, Yowie is big business. Cadbury has given the creatures their own freecall 1800 number. "Welcome to the Yowie Kingdom," says the on hold message. "On the other side of sunset, just a little west of nowhere, there lies a land where things are just the way they ought to be..."
Yowie holds 40 per cent of the children's market (it got there within a couple of weeks of its launch). The concept has also sold 1.5 million books, truck-loads of T-shirts, caps, fluffy wombats, show-bag type snakes and other plastic bits and pieces. There are plans to market Yowie in Canada and South Africa. Ther's a $17 million animated movie in the pipeline, a spin-off cartoon series for TV, and a licensing deal with Akubra hats. Even Davenport, the maker of socks and boxer shorts is offering to get in on the act, offering to put a Yowie on your wowie. In an industry where only one product becomes a stayer, it's no wonder Cadbury considers Yowie a certifiable success.
For Geoff Pike, the success has been a long time coming. Thirteen years ago, while trying to make a living in Hollywood as a screenwriter, the animator witnessed the phenomenal success of the Paul Hogan "throw another shrimp on the barbie" tourism ads. He also witnessed sales of tiny stuffed koalas go through the roof. And, he told himself, there has to be more to Australia than that.
Though born in London, Pike had moved to Australia after the war, and spent some years working as boundary rider in the outback. He took to nursing wounded animals in his tent, and picked up the nickname Doc.
As he cast about for a way of selling the Australia he knew to itself and to the world, his mind turned back to those early years and the changes that had been wrought on the landscape since.
Finally, he hit on the idea of creating an animated TV show, perhaps with a spin-off series of books, starring a posse of Yowies who fought to save their native habitat from the ravages of the earth-munching, ooze dripping, smoke-belching Grumpkins.
He piched the concept to his contacts in LA. He visited the folks at Mattel, sure they'd be lured by the merchandising opportunities. He even met with Steven Spielberg's people. He spent $200,000 of his own money developing storyboards, models, prototype toys. But still no one was interested. "It was like reaching for the moon out of a shark pool," he says.
Finally, 20th Century Fox took the bait. But just as Pike was practising his signature, the studio was swept off its feet by a little film called Crocodile Dundee. When a dejected Pike returned to Australia, he noticed the success of Kinder Surprise and thought there might yet be a way of making the whole thing work.
The rest is history. Pike won't discuss how much money he's earned from Yowie, but it's safe to assume he's made his investment back. Courtenay - whose official title in the Yowie team is Environmental Spokesman - donates his share of the royalties to a children's literacy fund. "It's not about making huge sums of money at all," says Courtenay. "We understand how market forces work and, for once, we've turned them to good."
Courtenay has gone so far as to make a bold proclamation of the impact Yowie might have on the children at whom it is aimed: "I guarantee that in 10 to 15 years' time we are going to have some of the most sophisticated ecologists in the world, and it all began with Yowie.
Whether or not it changes the world remains to be seen. But the idea that Courtenay claims felt "pretty flimsy" as he presented it to Cadbury on the 18th floor back in 1994 has certainly turned the local confectionery industry on its ear. "From the moment I saw it, I knew this was it," says Cadbury's marketing manager, Rod Slater. "Some ideas just leap out at you. I can't imagine any person in Australia would say no to Bryce Courtenay - and we certainly weren't going to be the first."
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