Marketing Communications

412 CHAPTER 12 BRAND ACTIVATION

Figure 12.14 Moving annual turnover for the total category

CASE 12:

‘The Perfect Size’: for every moment, there is a Mars bar

Introduction

Frank Mars was born in 1882 in Hancock, Minnesota. Since

he suffered from a mild form of polio, his mother taught

him at an early age to make chocolate dips to keep him

entertained. From 1911 onwards, Frank Mars started mak-

ing and selling candy to small stores. Being successful in

this business, he founded the Mars Candy Factory in

Tacoma, Washington. The first big breakthrough came in

1923 with the introduction of the first Milky Way®. Milky

Way was an instant success and sales rocketed to

$800 000. In 1925, Frank’s son, Forrest, joined the com-

pany and added pet care and food to Mars’ portfolio. Now,

Mars Inc. is one of the largest family businesses worldwide

with more than 70 000 employees in 73 countries. Holding

a leading position in each of the six different segments it

serves, namely Petcare, Chocolate, Wrigley, Food, Drinks

and Symbioscience, Mars Inc. realises a turnover of more

than $30 billion. Mars Inc. owns 52 A brands, several

of which are real global favourites. Think of M&M’s®,

Snickers®, Twix®, Mars®, Uncle Ben’s® rice, Pedigree® and

Cesar® dog food, and Whiskas® and Sheba® cat food. The

global appeal of Mars’ products is underscored by the fact

that the products are sold and enjoy a high popularity

in about 180 different countries. For example, Mars Inc.

makes 7 of the world’s 20 best-selling chocolate snacks.

Changing consumer needs in Belgium

Long-run success goes together with excellent products

and a profound insight into customer needs. To this end, all

Mars subsidiaries carefully monitor the trends in the envi-

ronment and regularly conduct consumer research. As is

the case for Mars Belgium, AC Nielsen data from 2006

showed that chocolate is an important category in the

Belgian snack market, holding a share of 28% as compared

with 33% for biscuits, 15% for crisps, 4.9% for candy and

6.7% for ice. However, the growth rate for chocolate

(+3.3%) was markedly smaller than for the other catego-

ries (+4.7% for biscuits, +6.8% for crisps, +4.9% for candy

and +6.7% for ice). A closer look at the specific chocolate

varieties revealed that all varieties were growing, except for

a decline of 2.2% in volume for chocolate bars. Making a

distinction between biscuit, hunger and indulgent chocolate

bars, the AC Nielsen data revealed that the problems were

situated in the biscuit and hunger bars (see Figure 12.14 ).

Although the general trend for biscuit and hunger bars

was negative, this was not the case for the Mars brands in

these categories (see Figure 12.15 ). Nevertheless, Mars

Belgium felt it had to secure its future, especially because

its core brands were situated in these categories and

because other sources confirmed the negative trend in the

category. Panel data from GFK, for example, indicated that

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