Woolies 0 – Frankie’s 1
Last Wednesday, Woolworths announced its intention to withdraw its complete range of "good old fashioned soft drinks" from its shelves countrywide, after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found against it in favour of Frankie's Real Olde Fashioned Softdrinks.
It did so not because it had to, according to CEO Ian Moir, but because "customer sentiment is against us." Gee, I wonder why?
And so came to a close one of the most embarrassing cases of David vs Goliath since the titanic battle between Justin Nurse's Laugh It Off Promotions and South African Breweries (SAB) over the hilarious "Black Labour White Guilt" T-shirt, which eventually ended up in the Constitutional Court.
In both cases the little guy won, but in the former, because SAB had decided to use its considerable financial muscle to silence Justin Nurse at virtually any cost, it resulted in his legal victory culminating in defeat – Laugh It Off closed its doors, and never printed another of its fabulous T-shirts, each one a masterpiece of contemporary social commentary.
Rather than going the potentially ruinously expensive legal route to challenge Woolworths' flagrant plagiarism of their nationally distributed retro-style soft drinks, KwaZulu Natal Midlands-based Frankie's approached the Advertising Standards Authority for relief, citing among\[orielle.berry\]st other things, Woolworths' use of their strapline "good olde fashioned soft drinks", the co-incidental use of all Frankie's product names, including one unique to Frankie's (cinnamon cola), and a remarkably similar bottle shape.
When the story initially broke late last year, it resulted in a massive surge of public criticism of Woolworths, which rapidly went viral. Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook were flooded with angry comment against Woolworths and in support of Frankie's, from Woolies shoppers and non-Woolies shoppers.
Talk about alienating an as yet untapped market. Woolworths initially did a Blackberry on the crowd, and maintained a splendid silence, but increasing public and media pressure forced the issuing of a self-righteous press statement denying any and all culpability.
And this despite the too-obviously-coincidental release of the soft drink range a mere six months after Frankie's MD Mike Schmidt and his team had pitched the entire product line to Woolworths, and subsequently heard nothing.
The pressure continued, and eventually Woolworths food MD Zyda Rylands appeared on television and (disingenuously) stated that there was no connection between Frankie's pitching the line to Woolworths six months earlier, and Woolworths subsequently releasing its remarkably similar range.
"It takes three years to develop an new product line at Woolworths," she intoned., "We could never do it in six months."
Which suggests that Woolworths had been working on an old fashioned line of soft drinks for at least two and a half years, when it agreed to meet with the Frankie's team to listen to their pitch.
Which if you think about it, suggests that Woolworths has the business ethics of an alley cat, because it conveniently forgot to disclose that fact to Frankie's.
Which makes it really hard to swallow that Woolworths did "not clone any concept" – as Mr Moir would have us believe.
The ASA obviously did not agree with you, Mr Moir, because it found in favour of Frankies.
But after the dust has settled, and Frankie's basks in the afterglow of its victory, enjoying unprecedented national media exposure (which it couldn't have bought at any price), and hopefully a massive increase in national sales and distribution, what will be the impact on the Woolworths brand trajectory, arguably one of the most valuable in retail South Africa?
Chances are it will be changing course if Woolworths doesn't do something about its internal value system.
Written by Norman McFarlane You are reading Woolies 0 – Frankie’s 1 articles
