Each month we catch up with Mike Baker for an insight into the world from a punter’s perspective. He’s a curious individual, bright and interesting but often baffled by what exactly goes on in the heads of the big cheeses of the creative, marketing and advertising world. Here's the monthly update from our man on the street...
I’m right miffed with Marmite at the moment. It’s not the stuff you whack on your toast that’s making me want to kill someone. Marmite recently displayed stunning ignorance of increasing public opinion when their marketing gibbons decided to start (start – not continue) to make the toast spread of champions available in a squeezy plastic bottle. Why now? Is it just me or are people behaving like plastic was invented last week? Get over it. It’s nasty stuff and has no place as a packaging material in a society as aware of pollution and its effects as ours is now. Plastic is hideous and the chances are your local authorities won’t collect it as recycling, because it doesn’t weigh enough (don’t get me started on that).
Apparently, there’s increasing pressure on supermarkets to significantly reduce their currently obsessive plastic packaging. This makes it all the more shameful that too few companies are prepared to support them through their own product marketing. Long before it became clear just how vile a material plastic is, Marmite were proud to stick to good old reusable glass. Their iconic brown jar stood defiantly on the shelf, next to all the tacky little poisonous plastic gits, until some bright spark thought, ‘hey, I know, given the current swell of public opinion about waste and pollution, it’s the perfect time to begin using plastic.’ Tossers.
Proper incensed by this ignorance, I sent a scathing email to Marmite, pointing out that responsible companies were those looking at ways to reduce plastic packaging, not looking at ways to begin using it. Don’t worry they said, we’re still doing the glass jar – I hope this puts your mind at rest, was their response. Well no, it doesn’t.
Clearly someone somewhere has missed the increasing stories about environmental pollution, landfill sites, the need to reduce food packaging and specifically plastic packaging, and catastrophic climate change in general. They must have, because in light of all that, no company would choose to start using plastic now. Oh, unless they’re incredibly irresponsible of course. Don’t boycott Marmite (how could you, it’s a desert island staple?), boycott plastic.
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