Walkers Crisps

Just a quickie today while I'm in the mood.

I've always loved Walkers crisps, I think they are a fantastically British institution and I often indulge, even though in recent years they have jumped on the 'trying to be healthy' bandwagon and have started reducing sat. fat and making their crisps so thin that they are about as filling as a lettuce leaf these days. And also despite the fact that their multipack bags are so small to reduce the amount of crisps they give away that it's always an insult when you open the packaging,  because the cheese flavour they bring out on occasion as a limited edition is the principle of evil made crisp and the smoky bacon ones are always slightly soggy. Otherwise I'm a fan.

However....I'm finding it hard to keep up my love for Walkers because of their bloody adverts. How much can one company over milk the cow? Argh. I used to like Gary Lineker!!!....Anyway, I sent them this. Hopefully I'll get a response better than the one I got for saying their crisps are too thin and how much I despise it when bad food companies make lame attempts to become more healthy. I want some bad food. Bad food is good sometimes. Anyway, hopefully they'll reply.


Dear Walkers,

I am in no way trying to be harsh but don't you think that the Gary Lineker crisp adverts have run their course? They've been running since 1995 and I don't think I'm alone in saying I think they are becoming more than a little tired.

I must admit that the original adverts were a genius concept, the first few were excellent, but it's just too much now. I think they are actually putting me off buying walkers.

I'm in no way a marketing expert, more of a portentous pedant, but I'm just getting fed up of the same old adverts from you. I thought maybe it was just me, but I've asked quite a lot of people and I've not met one yet that doesn't agree that it's time you moved on. I really wish I was a marketing/advertising expert because I'd have far more swing with this but I don't really understand what the team that comes up with the ideas for these adverts actually does. It's starting to look lazy. 'let's get Gary to sit behind some celebrity and steal his crisps' or 'lets throw a song into the ad and change one of the words to sound like a particular style of our range' being pretty much the only two themes that seem to run. You are becoming the 'Go Compare' of snack foods!

I assume you pay Gary a vast amount of money for these ad's and you will reply saying that you have conducted a 'tremendous amount of research' ,that sales are increasing, and that you are the leading crisp manufacturer in the U.K, but I think you owe it to your ever loyal customer base to come up with something new. I'm sure that a new angle would be equally as effective as the Lineker adverts were originally. In fact I think the brand is so established that I doubt Gary Lineker personally makes that much of an impact, especially if you consider how much he gets paid for it! I may be wrong, and as I say I'm no expert but surely for the amount of money thrown at Gary you could probably send huge teams of walkers uniform wearing reps promoting new flavours or doing little 'guess the flavour' (something you recently seem to have put a lot of Gary time into) campaigns in every major city in the U.K? Maybe you have done this as well but I've not noticed it so perhaps Gary is getting all the spoils?

I do some work for a small media company, and run a small blog, (Benny's eye on the street) so I'm tempted to go out and see what the people on the streets of the U.K think about the 'over milking' of the Lineker theme. Could be quite interesting to see what real people think face to face. I'll try to work it in.

Anyway, apologies for the rant. I hope you've read it. I think it's important, and despite my  pedantic demeanour I do really honestly think that it's time to ditch Gary.

Kind Regards,

Ben Greaves