The Hut's forward march

It's human nature to want to reinvent yourself from time to time. Maybe you get a new hairdo, perhaps you get snazzy new shoes, or you get your teeth straightened and whitened. The reasons why you do it are varied - you want to feel young, you want to look more professional, you want to appeal to members of the opposite/same sex. In short, you just want to freshen up a bit so people see you in a new light, or see something in you they hadn't noticed before.

Companies engage in reinvention, too, only it's called rebranding. They hit a wall in terms of revenues, they feel neglected or taken for granted by the public. They make a few cosmetic changes or undergo a major makeover to get you to take notice of them again. Essentially, they want to rekindle the ardor they felt in the marketplace once upon a time.

For example, as I noted this week, Miracle Whip is courting edgy youth who want to stand out. And Pizza Hut is giving its brand a facelift by adopting the name The Hut at some of its outlets.

The company is hoping the new branding will staunch the flow of consumer dollars to such competition as small pizza joints, improved frozen pies, and prepared pizza products offered by your local grocer. Moreover, by switching to The Hut, the company hopes consumers will understand that there's more to the chain's menu than suggested by the old name.

Looking at the new logo, it's not drastically different. It still looks a lot like a candy-apple fedora to me. But I'm feeling resistance to the new name. For starters, it's not materially different from the old name to make me reconsider Pizza Hut. It's like the company is hedging its bets, trading on tradition even as it tries to go forward. Which would explain why the company is not, for now, affixing the new name to all of its outlets.

But the name, The Hut, also bothers me. When I think of a hut, I think of a small, dank medieval hovel fashioned from mud and straw where you go to quench your thirst on mead served from a hog's head, or something. 'The Hut' just doesn't have that cachet, that necessary freshness, to compel people to give it a second look. It feels at odds with the efforts the brand is making to court young people, such as having a Twintern tweeting about the chain and other items on Twitter. Yet when you consider that Twitter is mainly the domain of boomers, it starts to make more sense.

I could be wrong. Yum Brands, The Hut's corporate parent, managed to shift Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC. Despite jokes that the name change was necessitated by the fact that KFC didn't use chicken anymore, it seems to have worked out well. But first blush suggests this is more a matter of a brand deciding what the market wants and imposing it as opposed to renewing the brand based on consumer input. If it works, I'll be the first to raise a stoat stein of hydromel to toast its success. Otherwise, the company's going to have to work very hard to patch the leaks in its Hut.

I Say Whip it, Miracle Whip it Good

As the Tower of Power once opined, 'Hipness is what it is/and sometimes hipness is what it ain't.' Well, one brand has made itself over a bid to be hip: Miracle Whip.

Miracle Whip has decided it's not enough to be distinguished from mayo - which you'll know from watching Undercover Brother is the condiment of choice for white people - no, siree. It wants to distinguish itself from... um, itself. So long to bygone odes to its tangy zip as performed by beefy burgers. Take a hike, ads that attempted to brand it as the choice ingredient for the erotic dreams of dumpy middle-aged foodies everywhere. Oh no. Miracle Whip has decided to reach out to the target group that everyone and their dog covets: the kids. And it thinks it has found a hip way to do it: a new commercial, all flashy and cutting edge, just like the kids like it.

Called Anthem , the Miracle Whip ad plays more like a statement of purpose or Manifesto (and certainly makes for a more coherent and clear manifesto than the one Microsoft deployed to premiere Bing). It lays out the philosophies that kids hold dear, not being quiet, not blending in, living fast, dying young and leaving a good corpse. Okay, on those last three, I lied.

The messages are delivered via edgy anonymous voice over artist and squiggly, chalky words that float on the screen over - what a surprise - very conventional images of food and fun until they are erased. It made me think of school, an image that always has a positive association and popularity among the young folk. So it's about as edgy and in your face as an Archie comic, or a puppy.

Funny thing is, if you come in just a second or two late on the ad, and miss the 'not be quiet', the squiggly chalk words on display seem to counteract the intent of the edgy voiceover guy. When he says 'We will not try to blend in', the magic screen says 'blend in.' When he talks about not disappearing into the background, the magic screen says 'disappear into the background.' It's like Miracle Whip is sending not so subtle or subliminal messages to the kids. Blend in, be invisible, eat our condiment, like it.

"We're not like the others; we won't ever try to be," says the voiceover guy, forgetting that most youth want to fit in, be accepted, or at least disappear in the background so the athletic kids don't haul off and wedgie them. Those who decide not to blend in generally do it when it is forced on them, so it become a perverse badge of pride. Which must be why Miracle Whip talks about itself as a 'mixed up blend of one of a kind spices.'

Let's put aside the fact that they put that text on the screen without any hyphens - rebels! - and deal with the substance of that message. Since a 'blend' is a 'mix', the copy is either lazy and needlessly redundant, or the 'mixed up' means that Miracle Whip doesn't know what it is or what it wants to be, apart from some vague notion of being unique. Since the ad never defines how Miracle Whip is unique, does not blend in, etc., I'll venture to say that mixed up must be referring to an identity crisis. Maybe that's what makes it unique - we don't know what we are, but we should would like it if you'd embrace us as fresh, hip and daring.

And therein lies the problem of such branding: if you and all your friends start eating Miracle Whip because you don't want to fit in, how are you expressing your individuality? The mind reels. Okay, Miracle Whip, I give in. You won't tone it down. But could you at least define what it is you won't tone down so I know why you are shouting about it?