I quite like Marmite. A lot of people quite like Marmite, but you will be hard pressed to find anyone who says so. For the past few years they have used the phrase, 'you either love it or you hate it' quite vigorously to promote the black sticky beer bi-product. This phrase has dripped itself into the national psyche, so that you can even see it used by members of Photoblog [photoblog.com].
It might seem quite strange that a company would deliberately use the word hate in relation to one of their products. Surely, that would put people off of buying it. But their's is a very clever campaign that recognises the fact that opinions about this strange tasting spread are quite polarised. It is true that lots of people love it and lots of people hate it. Of course, if you hate it you're not going to buy it anyway so there's no loss there. The beauty of the campaign though is based on a lie. It is secretly aimed at people like me. If we are led to believe that we either love it or hate it, then we have a choice to make. We can't chose hate because that isn't true, therefore everyone in the middle is forced into the love camp. Darned clever these advertising people.
Please click here to see other people's observations. [photoblog.com]
Marmite's Funny Website [marmite.com]
Thanks for the link Jon! I wsa originally going to use Marmite for my shot but realised I'd been beaten to it by you and went for Opal Fruits instead. Whether it's true or not you've got to admit it's an inspired ad campaign!