If you go to p-p-p-pick up a Penguin bar in the coming weeks and months, I hope you’re not p-p-p-perturbed by the absence of any actual chocolate inside.
That’s because, if you didn’t see the recent news story, Pladis – the owner of McVitie’s, which produces Penguin bars – said it was forced to reduce the amount of chocolate in the biscuit after difficulties sourcing cocoa beans.
Under UK food regulations, that means the biscuit can no longer be classed as “chocolate”. Instead, its coating must be described as “chocolate-flavoured”, because its quantity of cocoa solids is not sufficient for it to qualify as “chocolate” in its own right.
Penguin has not been the only biscuit on the chocolate-covered chopping board, either. Club, another McVitie’s staple, has also seen its cocoa content reduced, earning the probably unwanted label of “chocolate-flavoured”, like its Antarctic-branded cousin.
Both examples are clever and classic (if not underhanded) ways for Pladis to reduce costs while maintaining biscuit prices. It’s not something I like to hear because it feels like I’m getting a worse product, but I get it.
However, it’s not the reformulation of the biscuits themselves that I’m interested in. Rather, it’s Club’s pivot in slogan to stay within the rules that’s most notable.
It is, I think, a sweet mistake – a culinary faux pas – and it’s an error you can avoid in your own compliant content if you take note of this example.
Here’s why.
Don’t join the Club if you want to avoid these mistakes
To begin with, let’s look at Club’s original slogan. Running from the 1970s through the mid-90s, the original slogan – accompanied by a classic earworm jingle – was:
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our Club
But of course, Clubs no longer contain enough chocolate for this to be a viable slogan. I guess the marketing team agreed that “If you like a lot of chocolate-flavoured gunk that isn’t legally chocolate on your biscuit, join our Club” wasn’t catchy enough.
So, the team went in a different direction. Now, Club’s slogan is this:
If you like a lot of biscuit in your break, join our Club
Clever, right? Gets around the rules without changing too much of the original. Great work for this year, guys – now, when’s the Christmas party?
Not so much.
There are two reasons why I think this new slogan is bad.
- Clarity beats clever wordplay
Firstly, I don’t really understand the new slogan. In the original, the point is simple: whether it’s true or not, I come away thinking that a Club has even more chocolate than other chocolate biscuits.
But where on earth has “break” come from? What break? What am I breaking?
When am I supposed to be eating Clubs? As I snap a bone during my lunch hour? While my wife and I sit on opposite ends of the sofa?
The desire to stick to the original format here with some clever wordplay has just left me confused.
But that’s not the most egregious crime here in my book. No, that one is far simpler.
- It’s sneaky
Obviously, Pladis is not going to openly advertise the fact that they’ve reformulated the bar with cheaper ingredients to cut costs – hence their rejection of my “chocolate-flavoured gunk” line.
But, to me, trying to change the slogan so that it fits within the new rules feels sneaky, as if there’s something to hide.
I suppose it’s true, there is something to hide. But now the slogan tells me as much, and that feels like the opposite of what they were trying to achieve.
Writing honestly = writing compliantly
This is where this chocolatey metaphor drills down into the biscuity bedrock of my point.
Pladis had to change the slogan to comply with the rules. That’s fair enough; rules change. I don’t need to remind you of Consumer Duty coming into play in July 2023.
But in a profession as tightly regulated as financial services, it’s even more important to stay within the rules. You might face fines and sanctions, or even criminal charges, if you break the financial promotions rules, especially if your content leads to direct consumer harm.
Being honest is the best way to stay on the right side of the rules. To achieve that goal, I think there’s a simple fix when you’re asked to change something: start fresh.
Imagine that you have a blog which includes the sentence: “Life insurance is a really important part of your financial plan.”
Then, the FCA decides that you can’t describe life insurance as “important” (highly unlikely, but run with it).
You could do the bare minimum and change this to “Life insurance can be part of your financial plan.”
But actually, you could be more creative – and honest – with an alternative that sells the benefits without breaking the rules:
- Life insurance could provide your family with a payout that helps them maintain their standard of living after you die.
- Life insurance can offer you peace of mind, knowing that your family will be protected if the worst were to happen to you.
- Would your loved ones cope if you were to pass away unexpectedly? Then you may want to consider life insurance.
These examples simply change the sentence and remove the offending phrase, while making honest points about the subject.
In Pladis’s case, I know extreme honesty wouldn’t have worked (see “chocolate-flavoured gunk” again), but there were options beyond a tiny change to the slogan. In my view, had they gone back to the drawing board, they’d have been better off.
It’s exactly what Jake was talking about when he explained what we can learn about good copywriting from The Traitors.
Take compliance seriously and respect the rules
For many, compliance is an annoyance, something to overcome and get around so that we can do our jobs. In my book, that’s how Pladis treated the food regulation standards.
I see it slightly differently. I like the FCA’s marketing regulations because I sincerely think they’re designed to protect consumers, and that’s really, really important.
It’s frustrating to have to reword content sometimes. But if that’s the price of ensuring that everything we say is fair, accessible, and not misleading, I’ll gladly pay it.
So, next time compliance asks you to change an element of your marketing, don’t just do the bare minimum to get around the roadblock.
Get creative and rewrite it. You’ll meet the regulations while achieving those goals of clarity and honesty.
Get in touch
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