Who will win the Battle of the Brands?

Building a brand from scratch takes a huge amount of time, devotion and creative energy, whatever sector you inhabit, and the confectionery, snacks and bakery worlds are no different from that situation.

But as far as the UK’s chocolate industry is concerned, one of the largest players in the business remains Cadbury, which has now amassed over 200 years of history in the country, and global markets.

This week, it is destined to come under the spotlight for a special consumer contest for Channel 4 (this Friday 8pm), under the banner of Battle of the Brands, which features key analysis of what makes this business, and one of its closest rivals in the snacking segment, McVities, special in their own right, and how they have gone about capturing the hearts and minds of shoppers. 

For my sins, I’ll be participating in this latest piece of reality TV, which aims to shed a spotlight on what has given risen to these two powerhouses of the confectionery world. Certainly, in the case of Cadbury, there’s a sense that people have a strong emotional attachment to products such as Dairy Milk, Flake or Crunchie bars or even Freddos, which hold nostalgic childhood memories for many.

The same too can be said for McVities with its flagship brands including Jaffa Cakes, Chocolate digestives, Rich Tea, and Club and Penguin chocolate biscuits, that all hold a place in many household’s affections as popular treats that have continued to thrive down the decades.

In the case of Club and Penguin, they’ve undergone recent recipe changes in reducing the amount of chocolate in them, to the point they can no longer actually be called chocolate ,so only time will tell what impact this will have on their popularity. But it’s issues such as this that can easily decide the fate of a brand – as it’s by no means a given that consumers will necessarily stick by a product range just because ‘it’s what they always bought,’ as times have very much changed on that front. 

In a digitally-dominated marketplace, younger generations in particular can be especially swayed by what is doing the rounds on TikTok or other social media platforms, just as much as more conventional advertising or sense of longer-term loyalty to a favoured treat. All these questions and plenty more besides will be up for discussion tomorrow evening in the grand battle of the brands. 

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