Newfangled #34: Label Slapping - Make Cakes for Wookiees
Inspired by 1970s soft drinks and movie merchandise
A tiny corner of the UK internet was outraged this week as the totally tropical taste of ‘Lilt’ was rebranded ‘Fanta Pineapple & Grapefruit.’ The nation felt this disturbance in the force and a few thousand voices on Twitter cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced as Elon Musk bumped all of his own tweets up to the top of everyone’s feeds. But at least the flavour of the soft drink stays the same.
Surely, a more egregious offence would be to change the taste itself? Let’s remind ourselves that The Coca-Cola Company has form on that front, with the 1985 flop that was ‘New Coke’.
Even worse than either of these, IMHO,1 is ‘label slapping.’
What’s label slapping?
The term first came to my attention while watching the Netflix series The Toys That Made Us about the Star Wars toys made by Kenner under license from LucasFilm.2 As a total aside, there’s some great prototyping shown, if you’re a product manager or design-thinking fan, called ‘kit-bashing’ but I digress.
So, as the story goes, it normally took a year for a new toy to get into production including safety checks. But the deal between Kenner and Lucas was signed in April 1977 only a month before Star Wars was released in movie theatres on 25 May 1977. Very quickly after release it was clear the film was a blockbuster and there was massive pent-up demand for merchandise and December was looming.
So, what did Kenner do?
Label Slapping — they took products that they were already making, changed the colour of the plastic and added some spacey stickers and the Star Wars logo.
"Label-slapping was taking any toy and slapping Star Wars on it. You got an Easy-Bake Oven, if you got one for boys, put a Star Wars label on it. Make cakes for the Wookiees.3” — The Toys That Made Us
Their other tactic was to sell empty boxes with a voucher to send in to receive four action figures after Christmas.
So, why am I talking about label slapping, when this newsletter is all about new tech and business models?
Because whether you are a tech company selling to a big corporate, or you are inside that big company trying to get internal business unit leaders onboard, you might be competing against a label slap product.
A 3D drawing becomes “we already have a Digital Twin”
A macro in Excel becomes “we’re already doing predictive analytics”
A Zoom call with avatars becomes the “Metaverse”
And someone who can spell I.T. becomes an “Agile Coach”
But is this a problem?
I often talk about “think big, start small” and a change consultant will tell you to go for those “quick wins.”
The risk is that label-slapping might not be a stepping stone to the ultimate goal. It might be a full-stop. The organisation fools itself into believing it is job done and moves on. As Admiral Ackbar might say “It’s a trap!”
And deep down, you know it’s true. The kid that put an X-Wing on their Christmas list, isn’t going to be fobbed off with Uno Star Wars (a real thing) or Dobble Mandolorian (a real thing) or Guess Who? Star Wars Edition (a real thing).4
But often inside companies, leaders convince themselves that they are satisfied with the outcome of the label-slapped product. And that means that they no longer need to follow through on the “empty box” product that they were still prototyping. And, sticking with the 1970s Kenner toy analogy, it’s a plausible story to tell themselves that customers didn’t know what they were missing and competitors hadn’t manage to nail sci-fi movie merchandise either (see Star Trek)
Where am I seeing this play out right now?
Apps for traditional banks versus the challenger banks. I went to turn on notifications for the Nationwide banking app, only to realise that they don’t provide any real time notifications of transactions on your account. Funny how the goal posts of expectation move, without you even noticing.
Smart electricity meters where half hourly data is being collected and most people are still on flat rate tariffs - except for my Dad who never left “Economy 7” - where electricity is cheaper at night … another throwback from the late 1970s.
More to follow in the next newsletter…
Bringing it all together
So, what might we call a Star Wars label-slapped Fanta?
Jedi Juice? R2-Star-Brew?
Hit me up with your best suggestions.
See you next time.
The Round-Up
What we’ve been watching?
Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime. This is not an endorsement of the presenter’s views but seems to be a good taster into the business model challenges of farming in the UK and the real stars of the show are everyone apart from JC.
What we’ve been reading?
Work Chronicles - a webcomic about work
What we’ve been enjoying?
Pre-recording a talk for Digital Leaders Public Sector Insight Week- share with a friend who might be interested.
In my humble opinion
h/t to Dan V for the recco
I was today years old when I realised the spelling is Wookiee, not Wookie.
Perhaps Disney is taking this brand licensing a bit too far these days… have a quick search yourself and post your best examples in the comments.