N.Z. party to ‘smear’ campaign in Britain

Press, 20 November 1981, Page 13

N.Z. party to ‘smear’ campaign in Britain

By

PATIENCE WHEATCROFT,

“Observer,” London

The butter industry is on the attack. It has bombarded Britain’s newspaper readers with a staggering $BOO,OOO worth of vicious anti-marga-rine propaganda and there is more to follow. After years of losing market share, the butter barons are on the offensive to beat the inexorable spread of margarine. This campaign is abrasive and hard hitting. Margarine, according to the newly aggresive Butter Information Council, to which New Zealand is a contributor, is full of fat and fish oil, loaded with calories and cholesterol, the product of a lengthy and highly artificial manufacturing process, and just as much a killer as butter. Butter is at least pure and natural, as potential assassins go. Butter. is also twice the average price of margarine, in Britain, a point missing from the 8.1.C.’s advertisements but prominent in the minds of shoppers. In the last

three years butter’s share of the yellow fats market has melted from 60 per cent to less than 40 per cent. In the year to June, when it became dearer than ever, sales plummeted by 11 per cent while margarine sold nearly 30 per cent more. (In New Zealand, margarine is slightly dearer than butter). Price has been the main sales prod but clever marketing by the margarine men has enabled .penny-counting shoppers to justify buying it in other ways: it is healthier, less fattening, full of good things, and can still taste like butter. ... n

The butter people can stand it no longer. “Consumers are being misled,” thunders James Morton, chairman of the 8.1. C. which is funded by the butter producers of, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Britain. Margarine makers are allowed, and usually prefer, to keep guiet about ingredients. The bread and spread consumers have their own, often mistaken, ideas about what they are eating. The butter

men are particularly furious about fish oil — apparently only one in 100 people thinks fish oil has anything to do with margarine whereas it accounts for about half the 350,000 tonnes that Britain will eat this year. A big chunk of that will be Krona, a phenomenal success from those margarine magnates, Van den Berghs. The Unilever subsidiary, the one that can’t tell Stork from butter except at the profit “ margin, launched Krona

three years ago. It now has an impressive 14 per cent of the margarine market. “And it has won its sales from butter eaters,” delights Paul Clark, Van den Berghs’ advertising manager. That’s what grates with the butter men, who have groaned as Krona’s lavish advertising stressed how much like butter it looked and tasted, whilst costing just two-thirds of the price. So 8.1. C. and their advertising agents, Dorlands, are out to change Krona’s image. “Krona is up to 80 per cent tallow,” they proclaim, conjuring up visions of candles

With margarine spending nearly four times the butter $5 million advertising budget this year, Krona’s climb could well continue and real butter will only be for the cream of society.