Browsed by
Month: June 2020

How a Welsh harpist helped create one of the world’s most famous marketing icons

How a Welsh harpist helped create one of the world’s most famous marketing icons

Nansi record

Mary Ann “Nansi Richards” (nee Jones) was a Welsh harpist, sometimes known as the “Queen of the Harp”. She was an expert on both the triple and pedal harps.

Her interest began at the age of 10 and at 12 she owned her first harp. She won the National Eisteddfod harp competition three times in succession and went on to enrol at the Guildhall School of Music but left after a year. She teamed up with American comedian “Happy” Fanny Fields on the Music hall circuit.

Fanny Fields was famous for her Laughing Songs and for the Frog Dance, and the two young women devised tricks for Nansi to do while playing the harp, such as playing with her back turned, or playing two harps simultaneously.

They were very successful and went on to tour America. As well as many theatres the pair played for the Kellogg family and Nansi became friends with W.K. Kellogg.

It was during this time that Nansi pointed out that Kellogg sounded very similar to the Welsh word ‘ceiliog’ which means rooster or cockerel.

sweetheart 2

Kellogg’s Corn Flakes had been promoted using various concepts including ‘the sweetheart of the corn’ but the connection with a cockerel and the start of the day was clear.

The idea was given life by advertising agency Leo Burnett and Cornelius was ‘born’. The name is, depending on your point of view, inspired or – sorry – very corny. In some accounts the colouring of Cornelius reflects the Welsh flag with its green, red and white but that focuses on a more modern version of the character. In his original guise Cornelius had a green body, red comb, yellow beak, and multi-coloured (red, green, and yellow) tail and yellow legs and feet.

Kelloggs_Cornelius_Rooster

In early television commercials, Cornelius can’t crow until he eats a bowl of Corn Flakes because “Nothing gets you crowing in the morning like Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.”

A later, longer-running series was the Tall up campaign. These featured a little boy who we see eating his Corn Flakes for breakfast  suddenly the image of Cornelius on the box comes to life and takes the boy on a mini adventure. There is always an obstacle or danger and Cornelius produces a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and sings, “Tall up and up and up and up and up with the tall corn taste of Kellogg’s!”  The little boy grows duly very tall allowing him to save the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBBy7uRPNOE

Dino

 

Cornelius still features prominently and proudly on the pack some 63 years after he first appeared

Corn flakes

And what happened to Nansi?

Well, she continued to play and tour and frequently appeared on radio and television.  She was the official harpist for the Welsh Eisteddfod for a number of years. In 1967 she was awarded the MBE for her services to music in Wales and received in 1977 received an honorary Doctor of Music from the University of Wales. She published a volume of her reminiscences, entitled CRWPWRDD NANSI, in 1972.

nansi_richards

However, as far as I know the marketing industry hasn’t honoured her contribution to marketing iconography in any particular way .

The Clever Widow

The Clever Widow

220px-Veuve-Clicquot-Boursault

This tale works for me on many levels. I love champagne, I love brand stories and I want to find more brand stories where the lead character is a woman.

So, when I heard about Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin and her role in creating and building the Veuve Cliquot brand I decided I would have to write my version of the inspiring tale.

Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin was the daughter of an affluent textile industrialist in Reims, France. Next door lived Philippe Clicquot who also ran a successful textile business. They decided that coming together would be better than competing and following a custom prevalent in the 18th century they agreed the best way to seal the alliance was to arrange a marriage between their children.

So, in 1798, when she was 21 years old, Barbe-Nicole married Francois Clicquot, Philippe Clicquot’s only son. Happily, it seemed to work out well.

While the Cliquots’ focus was textiles, they also ran a small wine business. Reims, where the family lived, is in the Champagne region and though sparkling wine had been invented, the Champagne region was at that time more famous for its still white wines. Philippe Cliquot would buy from wine producers and export on; he had no real intention of expanding or moving into production. He used the wine to help fill out the boat loads of textiles he exported.

Francois and Barbe-Nicole had a different plan, and despite Philippe’s reservations  they set about learning the wine trade. Despite their passion for the industry, with the Napoleonic wars raging, their champagne business stalled and looked ready to collapse.

In 1805, Francois fell ill and died soon after, amongst rumours that it wasn’t a fever but suicide. Both Barbe-Nicole and her father-in-law, Philippe, were devastated by Francois’ death. Philippe announced that he would exit the wine business.

Barbe-Nicole however had other plans and approached her father-in-law with her ideas. Though he knew she was highly intelligent it is still somewhat surprising that he agreed. He however stipulated that she must first go through a period of apprenticeship. For four years she worked with the well-known winemaker Alexandre Fourneaux trying to make the business profitable.

It wasn’t really working and so Barbe-Nicole went to her father-in-law again, asking for more money, and again he agreed.

This time things aligned better for her. The Napoleonic Wars were ending, and she had plenty of wine in her cellars wine that would become the legendary vintage of 1811, but her success still depended on her taking a huge risk. She knew that there was huge potential in the Russian market for the kind of champagne she had been making – an extremely sweet champagne (it had  about twice as much sugar as there is in today’s sweet dessert wines). She wanted to get in early and corner that market.

The problem was that there were still naval blockades. She wanted to get ahead of potential competitors so smuggled much of her best wine to Amsterdam, which would mean a faster route to Russia. When peace was declared the shipment left immediately and her champagne beat that of her competitors by weeks.

alexander

Not long afterwards Tsar Alexander I announced that it was the only kind of champagne that he would drink. With this royal endorsement, her wine was a huge success.

Her next problem was that demand was potentially going to outstrip supply. Champagne making, at that time, was a tedious and wasteful business. Champagne is made by adding sugar and live yeast to bottles of white wine, creating a secondary fermentation. As the yeast digests the sugar, the by-products are alcohol and carbon dioxide, which give the wine its bubbles. The problem however is that once the yeast has consumed all the sugar, it dies leaving a winemaker with a sparkling bottle of wine but dead yeast in the bottom of the bottle. The traditional solution was to pour the champagne with the dead yeast from one bottle to another. It was this process that made production so time-consuming and wasteful. It also could ‘damage’ the wine by constantly agitating the bubbles.

To overcome the problem Barbe-Nicole introduced a revolutionary new method, known as riddling. Instead of transferring the wine from bottle to bottle to rid it of its yeast, she kept the wine in the same bottle but consolidated the yeast by gently agitating the wine. The bottles were turned upside down and twisted, causing the yeast to gather in the neck of the bottle.

Champagne-Riddling-Rack-Veuve-Clicquot-Pupitre

Not only was this a quicker method, it produced better quality champagnes. Luckily riddling remained a house secret, testimony to the loyalty of her employees. It would be decades before competitors like Jean-Rémy Moët would find out how to replicate her method.

Barbe-Nicole, the clever ‘veuve’ (French for ‘widow’) went on to expand the business and the Veuve Cliquot brand globally before she died in in 1866. She never remarried and some historians believe that was because it would most likely have meant she would have had to relinquish control of her business.

VC

In the later years of her life she wrote the following advice for a grandchild: “The world is in perpetual motion, and we must invent the things of tomorrow. One must go before others, be determined and exacting, and let your intelligence direct your life. Act with audacity.”

The advice rings true for marketers today.

And the moral is if at first you don’t succeed, but you truly believe in what you are doing, try and try again. Is there something you truly believe in that deserves another chance?

 

Footnote: thanks to Paul Graham, Marketing & Communications Director, UK, Moet Hennessy portfolio who mentioned the story during a webinar hosted by the Marketing Society Scotland