Snickering Spolier alert: Isn’t it odd that a Milky Way means different things depending on where you stand? Isn’t it strange that Dove means soap in one aisle and chocolate in another? Isn’t it funny that Ethel M Chocolates sounds like a grandmother confectioner, but is actually a retirement project by one of the Mars family who make “American Luxury Chocolate” in “the heart of the Mojave Desert”. They produce Mars Bars too. To find out the answers to these and other questions, keep watching Soap^w^wreading. In the 1950s-1980s in the UK and closely related anglophone countries1, Mars (UK Ltd) sold Marathon. And then in 1990 they dropped the UK-specific name to call it, drum-roll please, Snickers. Apparently, some MBA read in their copy of the Big Book of Marketing that global brand consistency was important, decades of brand loyalty is an irrelevant legacy asset, and a global rebrand was needed ASAP. What could go wrong?2 It around now that someone will point out that Snickers does not translate well into some English-speaking places (because “snickering” is the sound of someone laughing), but the Marketing People insist that its just the name of their product, it was named after a horse, nobody finds it funny, and we can finally eschew all the snickering jokes. Another product that Mars (UK Ltd) sold was Milky Way. The advertising campaign for it between 1950s-1980s has the slogan, The sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite. Advertising works. People still remember it today. And this is where things get confusing. If you were in the UK and/or Commonwealth, that advertising campaign made complete sense. A Milky Way bar was sizable-chunk of pure-unadulterated lightweight whipped nougat wrapped in chocolate. Meanwhile, in North America, Mars International3 sold something called a 3 Musketeers[^three] which is the closest thing to a UK Milky Way, and the thing that they did sell in the USA that was called a Milky Way is what everybody else would call a Mars bar if the almonds were missing. Confused? Me too. Somebody is to blame. Let’s find out who. A UK/Europe/Australia Milky Way is a light, whipped nougat coated in milk chocolate. It’s relatively airy and was marketed as a light snack, hence the famous slogan, “The sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite.” A US 3 Musketeers bar looks4 to a European very much what they would call a Milky Way bar. Despite having a three in the name, it only comes in one flavor, because of the second small disagreement5. A US Milky Way is a denser slab of nougat topped with caramel and covered in milk chocolate6 product. It is a Mars Bar sans almonds. A US Mars Bar is a nougat slab topped with caramel and covered in milk chocolate. Or rather, was, they discontinued it in 2002, and there was a brief dalliance with Walmart in 2010-11 who revived it then killed it off again. Like a thing that refuses to die, the Mars subsidiary Ethel7 M Chocolates makes a “limited/gourmet” edition8. A UK/Europe/Australia Mars Bar is nougat topped with caramel mixed with almonds and covered in milk chocolate. Mars is both a bar, as in a Mars Bar, a corporation (Mars, International), a subsidiary of a corporation (Mars (UK) Ltd), and a planet in the Milky Way galaxy, not to be confused with the Galaxy chocolate bar. Galaxy, the chocolate bar, is a milky-smooth chocolate bar from Mars (UK) Ltd, but for the E/ME/A regions. North America get Dove instead, a chocolate product. Do not confuse Dove (the chocolate product) with Dove (a soap bar/liquid) made by Unilever9. One is designed to be eaten; the other is designed to stop you smelling like a person who eats chocolate bars instead of washing. As always, the Marketing People could not stop themselves, and Dove (the soap) has spent many years insisting it is not a soap but an edible product because it’s slogan for many years has been “Dove is not a soap. It’s a beauty bar”. They could get away with this claim because it’s “¼ moisturizing cream”, and so qualifies as a beauty product. Once again, the Marketing People saw this, ran with it, and in 2004 they came up with the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. My skin has never felt softer. Dove, the US chocolate product (or “Dove Bar” if being pedantic), was a Mars acquisition when they gobbled up the Dove Candies & Ice Cream company. I did some research (aka Googling) and the only connection between Mars and Unilever is that “both companies are enormous consumer-goods businesses with overlapping supermarket shelf space”. If QI ever asks: What is the connection between Mars and Unilever, the answer is a Dove: one is a bar, the other a soap, both a product name. Just when you think this is all clear in your head, somebody cooks up Snickers Almond which is what happens when somebody adds almonds to a Snickers Bar because what they really want is a Mars Bar but the Marketing People got the final word. If a product has a sensible name and a coherent branding strategy, don’t worry, the Marketing People can soon change that. That would be the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. As far as the Marketing People go, its the English-speaking world that is not North America. There are other parts of the world that speak English, sometimes even as a first language, but they don’t count because Marketing People seldom remember their Geography, let alone History. ↩︎ The MBAs who embrace the Big Book of Marketing always to read Chapter 7, “When Rebranding Initiatives Fail to Deliver Expected Outcomes: Pitfalls to Avoid, Blame to Assign Elsewhere”. There is much to snicker about in that chapter. ↩︎ It is always amusing how corporations, particularly those from the USA, use “worldwide” to describe whatever market happens to matter most to them, even if they never export outside their own country. Geography tends to become surprisingly flexible when marketing departments get involved. ↩︎ Beauty is skin deep, apparently. So is taste. While some products look suspiciously similar in different markets, the taste can be surprisingly different. ↩︎ The second small disagreement, or World War II as the Historians insist it be called, caused a few problems. One of these problems was food rationing and sugar being restricted. Clearly, this is a problem when you make things that need a lot of sugar. According to Industrial Culinary for Beginners, the solution is to substitute and reduce ingredients and hope nobody notices. If they do notice you tell them to shut up because there is a war on. If they do not notice, congratulations, you can use this technique later when somebody looks up enshittification in the dictionary. Long story short, during the war they dropped the less popular vanilla and strawberry flavors, cheapened the chocolate one, then after the war carried on because nobody complained, or if they did, nobody important complained. ↩︎ What is Dada? What is chocolate? The distinction is ingredients and percentages: how much cocoa solids, cocoa butter, milk solids, sugar, and other fats are required before something can legally call itself chocolate. In some markets, replacing cocoa butter with vegetable fats means you have left the kingdom of chocolate and entered the exciting world of “chocolatey confectionery” or “chocolate product”. The legal debate about whether something is “chocolate” or “chocolate product” is one thing, but it is also a matter of taste, and of literal exposure. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king: if all you have tasted is “chocolate product” then “chocolate” is a very different thing. And vice versa. Apart from taste, if you look at what legally qualifies as “chocolate product” vs “chocolate” you may want to reconsider your life choices. Do not go down this rabbit hole if you have recently indulged in some “chocolate product”. ↩︎ Ethel sounds exactly like the kind of woman who spends her time having tea with Edith, Mildred and Gertrude. Very much of an era, especially if you have read any Wodehouse, and I have. Real-life is stranger than fiction. Ethel M Chocolates is fairly new on the scene, doing “Luxury Chocolate Excellence Since 1981” in Nevada by Forrest Mars Sr., one of the Mars dynasty who wanted to play confectioner in his retirement. Establishing a chocolate factory in Nevada, a place where building temperature-critical anything is one level of crazy. I have been to Nevada and it is seriously inhospitable to visit and is the last place that screams “this is the ideal location to build a chocolate factory,” but with air-conditioning even the impossible becomes possible. Another level is to specialize in liqueur-filled chocolates, a real niche market, but apparently when you are next to Las Vegas, they just love this stuff because it screams luxury and indulgence. Naming a company after your mother, Ethel Mars, a third. Ethel M Chocolates, sounds like they should come with a strap-line “purveyors of finest liqueur-filled chocolates”, but they don’t because that name is more than enough. It is marketing gold. The name alone evokes that of a classy European-esque chocolatier, and the classy (wealthy) people who go to Las Vegas just adore it. Could you resist the “Elevated chocolate experience” and their artisans who deliver “curated experiences designed to captivate the senses of passionate taste-seekers”. ↩︎ When the Marketing People position something as both “gourmet” and “limited”, be suspicious. ↩︎ Dove (soap) was a product launched in 1957 by Lever Brothers, whose before then were mainly known for Sunlight soap (a perennial favorite in TV and movies when you want to evoke that 1940s nostalgia). Back in 1929, Margarine Unie and Lever Brothers had a corporate marriage (merger) and Unilever was formed. The backstory is fascinating: Lever Brothers needed fats and oils for soap production, Margarine Unie needed fats and oils for margarine production. For the Dutch management at Margarine Unie the proposition was that it presented an opportunity for both companies to do a little vertical integration and build supply-chain security. The massive purchasing power and, if you will exclude the pun, leverage was an accidental bonus. Economies of scale, and all that good stuff. The merger went ahead because regulators either side of the pond did not regard it as an antitrust problem. Margarine Unie was already a massive entity (Unie is Dutch for Union), and they had already absorbed quite a lot of their competition in the European margarine business. Lever Brothers, meanwhile, were not just a couple of siblings making soap but has already acquired a few soap companies along the way too (like Pears Soap). Instead of making war over acquiring fats and oils that each needed, they got married, each bringing their own not-insignificant portfolio. Today Unilever is a top-tier global consumer-goods conglomerate. Nothing to snicker about. ↩︎