Sorry Premier - it's a 'no' from Richard Oldham for your new X-shaped Oxo stock blocks


Oxo is a brand with a treasure chest of iconography that other brands eye with envy: the red and white pack, the palindromic name with its noughts and crosses simplicity, not to mention having been in our mothers' kitchens for generations.

All of this should be a goldmine for its owners, but unfortunately there is a catch: brands like this become loved more for their imagery than for the products we buy from them. Like Barbara Windsor and other British national treasures, we love them for what they remind us of not for what they offer now.

Because of this, these brands often remain perversely resistant to innovation, falling into a tailspin of self-referential awareness-building marketing activity that only serves to reassure existing users that they've already got the right packet festering in the back of their kitchen cabinet, so no need to buy more.

In the past, Guinness has fallen into the same trap the icon of the perfect pint it spent years investing in became so powerful that it eclipsed the brand, making it nigh-on impossible to innovate around.

So, creating a PR whirlwind for Oxo by re-forming the cubes into x-shapes and having fun with an X-Factor spoof will, sadly, not deliver the returns Premier Foods is hoping for. While the exploitation of the x is a cute tactical device, it fails to address the real issues in the stock cubes market. Our research suggests that more than the 'crumbliness' of the cube, the biggest consumer issue these products face is the perception of cubes being artificial and lacking naturalness.

At a fundamental business level, the category is failing to recruit new users, is increasingly suffering from cannibalisation from own label and is losing frequency of use due to changing consumer cooking habits these days we're more likely to assemble a meal from prepared components than cook it from scratch.

Perhaps taking a leaf out of Unilever's book and developing innovation that is truly relevant to consumers needs today would be a good starting point next time. So, sorry Oxo I think you're cute, but I'll be stirring Knorr's Stock Pot into my next dish.


Richard Oldham is director of innovation at brand consultancy The Value Engineers.