till now, your buying and consumption of chocolate literally has been in the hands of the GODS. They are the ‘mind controllers’ of the chocolate world and it’s their job to make sure that you continue to buy, buy, buy. Like our two advertising people, what you believe to be your idea – to buy chocolate in this case – is often anything but. The hard reality is the GODS have been planting images and catchy slogans throughout your journey through life with the sole purpose of getting you conditioned to buy the stuff – most of the time without even knowing what made you do it. This is why a massive 90% of all chocolate sales are what is known as ‘point-of-sale’ or ‘impulse’ buys. Yes, surprising as it may sound, according to the chocolate companies themselves only 10% of chocolate sales are actually pre-planned (ie, gifts for Mother’s Day, saying, ‘I love you’ and so on); the rest are made on ‘the spur of the moment’ – or are they?
The 90% of sales apparently made on impulse are at times such as when you are standing in a queue at a supermarket and just happen to see a glossy packet containing chocolate; or when you are waiting for a train and you hear the cry of glass-imprisoned chocolate bars screaming at you to set them free; or when you stop for petrol and grab a bar when paying – you know that sort of thing. However, the cocoa seeds of purchase must have already been sown some time prior to the moment of buying. Think about it, would a non-smoker ever buy cigarettes ‘on the spur of the moment’? Would they ever ask for some simply because they happen to have bought some petrol? Would they hear the loud cries from nicotine packets as they begged for freedom from their glass prisons on station platforms? No, of course not! If you don’t smoke you don’t buy them, no matter what impulsive mood you are in; smokers buy cigarettes because they are already conditioned to smoke – in exactly the same way that you are already mentally and physically conditioned to eat chocolate.
In truth the conditioning has been going on ever since you were old enough to say, ‘The Milky Bars Are On Me’ and has been going strong throughout your life. Product placement after product placement, billboard after billboard, TV campaign after TV campaign, sponsorship after sponsorship, even government literature cleverly designed to plant the idea that life is just simply more fun with a ‘boost’ or ‘treat’ of chocolate and all those who don’t indulge are clearly boring no-hope health freaks who are obviously a few cocoa beans short of a full pod!
There is no question that placing chocolate at the checkouts of supermarkets, newsagents and petrol stations plays a massive role in their sales. It is also true that many people wouldn’t buy half as much if they didn’t have it shoved in their face at every opportunity. However, the point is that you have already been conditioned to eat it for this kind of product placement to have the desired effect. Recently there have been calls for this kind of product placement to be banned, especially where it is aimed at children, but I think there is more chance getting run over by a giant Easter egg than this ever happening.
GREAT CHOCOLATE SMOKES ALIVE
The chocolate companies, just like the nicotine boys and girls, are true masters of the emotional hook, not just on a mental level but also at a physical one. Get the two right and BOOM – you’ve got one almighty addictive winner, a lifelong customer and, of course, several penthouses in Malibu! In fact, the similarities between the tobacco and chocolate industries are more than a little spooky and go way beyond the striking similarity between the Silk Cut colour and that of Cadbury Dairy Milk (have you noticed that?).
Both cigarettes and chocolate have colourful glossy packets, both have used words like ‘satisfying’, ‘lift’ and light’ in their advertising campaigns, both have role models such as the ‘Marlboro Man’ and the ‘Milky Bar Kid’, both have regal or ‘out of this world’ names, such as ‘Royal’ and ‘Super Kings’ in the cigarette world and ‘Mars’, ‘Milky Way’ and ‘Galaxy’ in the chocolate world. In fact, both even have names with Death in the title. There is a brand of cigarettes called ‘Death’ (how nice) and a (how can you describe it?) big blob of chocolate called ‘Death By Chocolate’. Both chocolate and cigarettes have been given to troops in World War II, both have gone to considerable lengths to prove their product is not just safe but has incredible health benefits, and both have one person in common – Philip Morris. Philip Morris not only owns the world’s leading cigarette company, Marlboro, but has recently started buying chocolate companies. They even beat the mighty American chocolate company Hershey to acquiring Freia Marabou, a Norwegian chocolate company with a strong presence in Scandinavia. On top of that, they also once owned and, I understand, still have plenty of shares in Kraft Jacobs Suchard: a company which produces Terry’s All Gold and perhaps the most instantly recognizable chocolate in the world – Toblerone. Toblerone’s slogan was always ‘Out On Its Own’, but next time you have a triangular-shaped choccie, spare a thought for the extra money you’re ploughing into Philip Morris’s pocket, helping to make sure that, on a financial front, they are truly ‘out on their own’. The coincidences don’t stop there either. Even Philip Morris’s ‘Marlboro Man’ was created by Leo Burnett, the same person who came up with the much-loved Uncle Ben character – owned by Master Foods, part of the Mars company.
Such is the power of Philip Morris that they have managed with Toblerone to do what the makers of ‘Sunny Delight’ did with their product. One minute it wasn’t there, the next every shelf was packed with the stuff. Some of the biggest sales for Philip Morris come from duty-free shops in the airports of the world. You can’t but fail to notice the large, gold-wrapped, glossy boxes of … chocolate! Yes, haven’t you noticed that now Toblerone not only has the same colour wrappings as Benson and Hedges cigarettes, but it has also grown just a bit in size? Have you also noticed the shelf space these massive bars of Toblerone have been found? Have a look next time you’re in a duty free – at first glance you would think there is no other chocolate on the planet except Toblerone. And be aware that getting this kind of shelf space is no easy feat – you need more contacts than Specsavers to pull it off … oh, and flipping great wedges of cash too! This is because of the 90% ‘point of sale’ factor – it’s all about being seen.
I always suspected there must be some link between the two ever since I used to buy chocolate cigarettes – when I was just seven years old! If they can make chocolate cigarettes legal for children, I really wouldn’t put anything past them. Forrest Mars was even once a travelling salesman … for Camel cigarettes! It was also partly due to cigarettes that the Mars company grew the way it did. According to Forrest Mars, it all started with a simple suggestion to his father Frank, ‘Why don’t you manufacture something like Camel cigarettes?’ And the rest is history.
There is one other similarity between the two which I forgot to mention – both cigarettes and chocolate can be highly addictive. The chocolate companies, however, like their cigarette industry cousins, will naturally deny this until we are blue in the face, but somehow I don’t think it’s disputable.
WHAT IS ADDICTION ANYWAY?
Put simply, addiction is a mental and/or physical hook, hence the expression ‘hooked’. Addiction is an emotion and the emotion is fear. Any substance which creates the fear that life wouldn’t be the same without it, that you wouldn’t be able to cope with and/or enjoy your life the same way without it, is an addictive drug. So does mass-market chocolate fall into this category? You’d better bet your chocolate bottom it does.
Now clearly addiction has its levels and I realize that not everyone who eats chocolate is like Maureen Young (the woman who used to get through 200 bars of chocolate a week), but the fact that so many people are buying this book because they want to stop eating it is surely proof of its addictive nature. I mean, even if you loved them, you wouldn’t need to buy a book entitled The Simple Way to Stop Eating Sardines if you wanted to stop eating sardines, would you? There aren’t any ‘sardine patches’ or organizations such as Sardine-olic Anonymous are there? Yet there are ‘chocolate patches’, there are people who run their lives with a Chocoholics Anonymous way of thinking, and there are thousands of people spending God knows how much on therapies such as acupuncture and hypnotherapy in an attempt to free themselves of their craving for chocolate.