British Marketing and Packaging
Marmite's publicity campaigns initially emphasised the spread's healthy nature, extolling it as "The growing up spread you never grow out of." During the 1980s, the spread was advertised with the slogan "My mate, Marmite", chanted in television commercials by an army platoon. (The spread had been a standard vitamin supplement for British-based German POWs during the Second World War.)
A 2004 UK TV advert, which parodied the 1958 Steve McQueen film The Blob, substituting Marmite for the original alien space menace and including scenes of fleeing crowds, was dropped from children's television after concerned parents reported that their children had been scared by the adverts and had nightmares after viewing them.
In 2006, a new "squeezy" jar of Marmite was released. The container is made of flexible plastic which can be squeezed to dispense the product. When first launched, the "Marmite" logo was replaced by the words "Squeeze me".
Paddington Bear featured in the Marmite UK TV advertisement (broadcast on 13 September 2007); in which he tries a Marmite and cheese sandwich instead of his traditional marmalade sandwich. When he offers the sandwiches to other characters, he gets mixed and often dramatic reactions.
In 2011, Unilever launched a new campaign themed around recipes that use Marmite. The campaign was called "Haute Cuisine, Love Marmite Recipes", with the "u" in Haute being blocked by a jar of Marmite at the end of the commercial making "Hate Cuisine".
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Famous quotes containing the word british:
“In New York—whose subway trains in particular have been “tattooed” with a brio and an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame—not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.... Even the most chronically dispossessed appear prepared to endorse the legitimacy of the “haves.””
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. “Cleaning and Cleansing,” Myths and Memories (1986)