Back To The Tim Tam Future

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday August 14, 2008

Julian Lee

Arnott's marketing director tells Julian Lee tough times are good for its classic biscuits.

IT HAS been a good year for the Arnott's marketing director, Susan Massasso. Market share is up, as are sales of perennials such as Milk Arrowroots, Nice and Scotch Fingers. This year she approved a new ad campaign - the first for the brand in a decade - reminding shoppers why the company's biscuits are part and parcel of Australian life.

But Massasso does not want to talk about the news that its agency of 70 years, George Patterson Y&R, is having to fend off interlopers to work on a big project, thought to be for Tim Tams. Instead she prefers to talk about the gains of the past year and the fact that, on the face of it, hers is one of the best marketing jobs in the country.

Unlike many packaged goods marketers, she and her team are free to originate ideas and take them to market without having to ask permission from the owner of Arnott's, the Campbell's Soup Company. The company's New Jersey masters know better than to interfere in the business of making biscuits, she says.

"Not many Australian marketers have that freedom," says Massasso, who made the switch from Unilever seven years ago after the appeal of working on "global brands" faded.

In the last financial year, the company's share of the $1 billion biscuit market rose 1.5 share points - or another $15 million in sales.

For the first time in a decade its heartland biscuits, the plains and creams that make up a third of its business, are in growth, suggesting to Massasso that Arnott's is well placed to ride any economic downturn where share is expected to drift towards cheaper "value" brands and private label. Private label now account for 10 per cent of sales and is the company's biggest competitor.

"That's amazing in a marketplace where competition is at its greatest and commodity inflation is growing," she says.

A refocus on plains and creams [the category name given to such biscuits as Iced Vo Vos, Nice and Monte Carlo] instead of other areas helped revitalise the business. The top four sellers: plains and creams; Shapes; Tim Tams and Jatz account for nearly 80 per cent of the company's $660 million annual sales.

Massasso identifies two distinct types of consumers: those who constantly yearn for something new and demand variety; and those who continue to find comfort in the constant. Even though she has to satisfy both segments she believes the latter category to be in the ascendant and is partly responsible for shoppers coming back to the basic biscuit lines.

"I believe in time there'll be a shift back to the heartland. There are a lot of macro trends around going back to the simple things in life and I think that will be a big driver in consumer purchasing behaviour."

Especially, she says, in an economic downturn when people will go back to what they know and love. "It's not as if we've been tricking up a Scotch Finger," she says. "The fact those consumers are responding to this is an indication that a number of people want to get back to basics."

It is this area that Arnott's and Patts have tapped into with the brand campaign, which Massasso admits was a long time in gestation because of the responsibility of tampering with the brand. As she says, somewhat grandiosely: "We are not a national brand: we are fabric of the nation brand."

She says the challenge is balancing the desire to constantly innovate the Tim Tams range with the need to "nurture" the core brand, which she admits has been neglected. It is this project that is believed to be up for pitch, news of which broke after this interview. Since then all Massasso has said on the subject is that its roster of agencies Patts, DDB and Clemenger BBDO will remain unchanged.

While limited edition Tim Tams, such as Love Potions and Pink Wish(which raises money for breast cancer research), deliver a shot in the arm to sales, they don't always feed back into Tim Tams core brand values. Not that they are lagging; sales of Australia's most popular biscuit have risen by nearly 19 per cent in two years and last year hit $100 million.

Whatever emerges from the project it is clear that the corporate voice will give way to the consumer's. "Marketers talk about being the owners of the brand, but at Arnott's we believe Australians own the brand. We don't like to interfere with that relationship," Massasso says.

"Marketers can sometimes get ahead of themselves about the role that brands play in people's lives.

"When you go to a focus group and you watch Tim Tam eaters and the energy that is in the room and the conversations that they have among themselves ... we have to remind them that time is up and they have to move on."

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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