The Pollywog Blog

Kraft’s most embarrassing and painful new product introduction is now complete. In what has been dubbed an epic Vegefail, its new Vegemite + cheese spread will henceforth be known as “Vegemite Cheesybite.”

More than 30,000 people voted for a winning name by way of online and telephone polling. “Vegemite Cheesybite” received 36% of the vote. In second place with 25% of the vote was “None of the Above”.

Interestingly, according to another online survey, most people think that this was all a PR stunt. Just look at the volumes of free media exposure, they argue. Kraft would have had to spend millions on traditional media to get this much awareness.

But that’s giving the brand managers at Kraft way too much credit. These folks are as risk-averse as they come. It’s inconceivable that they would purposefully unleash such an avalanche of negative attention. After all, they were so afraid of failure that they consigned the responsibility of naming their new product to the customer hivemind.

In my view, this situation is far more likely to be exactly what it looks like. Kraft’s managers were dim and naive, but not mean and conniving enough to have knowingly set poor Dean Robbins–the creator of “iSnack 2.0″– up for humiliation. He’s the one I really feel for.

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Turns out the product will remain in Kraft’s Vegemite line, but will be renamed. That’s reasonable.

However, Kraft says that it has culled a short list from names submitted during the contest and will–wait for it–conduct a survey and choose whatever the public tells them to.

Again, instead of evaluating these name options on a set of relevant criteria that affects how well the brand name will perform in the marketplace, they’re just going to leave it to whatever the public likes.

“Rest assured, Kraft’s hands are off it,” spokesman Simon Talbot told the Brisbane Times. “The public can have their say and it won’t have anything to do with us.”

This reeks of “we just want this problem to go away,” but still I’m dumbfounded that a company the size of Kraft would so completely relinquish its opportunity to create this brand.

Although Kraft isn’t saying which names will be voted on, there’s a short list on its Web site with names some believe are front runners:

2ritemite
Golden Mite
Allroundamite
Newumite
Snackmite
Blonde
Ruddymite
Wow Chow
Moo in Mud
Vegemite blonde

If I were Kraft, I’d want this problem to go away, too. But now it appears the company is going to live with this branding mistake for the lifetime of the product.

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