For thousands of years Indigenous Australians have set fire to forests in the knowledge that by doing so, after the smoke and ash has settled, could encourage the growth of plants for food or game for hunting with the new vegetation. It might seem counter-intuitive to destroy in order to make something benefit you, but it’s a concept that I’m wondering if Arnott’s is working with at the moment.

Disruption is very much on trend currently in marketing circles and is something that many brands are focusing on. Challengers and startups actively pursue the disruption to carve themselves out some market share whilst the entrenched market leaders actively try to fend these disruptors off and maintain the status quo.

But what if a market leader was to effectively burn themselves to the ground in the idea that they could rise up bigger and better from the ashes. The Shapes brand is popular, but apart from a few limited-edition flavour extensions over the years, has remained centred around a few key flavours (one really if you ask me…The Barbeque Shape). So if flavour extensions haven’t been popular enough to see a sales rise; then what else do you do. My theory…?

Glad changed their cutter bar position on their Glad Wrap product and the PR storm that kicked off in response saw a mistake bring Glad Wrap the kind of attention not seen since…well…ever I guess. Arnott’s have created a ‘new & improved’ flavour mix for their Shapes range and effectively lit the fire under the brand and stood back to watch it burn as social media has almost predictably exploded with thousands of complaints from outraged Australians about how poor the new flavours are compared to the original.

But what if by creating their own disruption in their own product line, they’re actually planning something more cunning. Will the ‘new & improved’ flavours be killed off using the angle of  ‘listening to their consumer and having their interests at heart’ (another positive for them), with the PR generated from the removal and reinstatement of the original flavours being used to bring back the ardent fans, but then also the lapsed user.

It’s not likely to be a Classic Coke moment because they’ve planned for the backlash, whereas Coke genuinely thought they were improving the recipe. If Arnott’s indeed played their cards right, it means they would have had everything planned out to cause minimal logistical disruption but maximum market disruption.

So that’s my theory. They say any publicity is good publicity, so we’ll just have to wait and see how long we have to wait before we’re back to the original flavours only and those new and improved boxes will be collector’s items selling for way over the odds on eBay in a year’s time.

Written by Chris