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Bernard Matthews: the face of re-assurance

Posted in General, Marketing February 16th, 2007 by Melinda Varley

Being the bigger man and saying sorry isn’t always easy. Especially when you know public speculation says you were very wrong. But this week, Mr rags to riches Bernard Matthews went in the national press publicly apologising for the bird flu blunder at his Suffolk turkey farm.

Not an easy thing to do when your face is that of the brand. But Mr Matthews needs to be applauded in some way, at least. By facing up to the problem, on the front pages I might add, and deciding not to do a reassurance campaign as yet, his ‘sorry’ face says a great deal about his own respect for the brand he created.

If an owner himself not only has the respect but also the faith in his brand, it says a lot for its values. It in some way gives the rest of us faith that he and the brand are indeed looking out for us and our turkey preferences. However, some people have said this was not soon enough, raising the question of whether or not he only appeared due to mounting public pressure.

Bernard Matthews became a household name when Mr Matthews appeared on television plugging his brand in front of his huge mansion on his turkey farm in the late 80s.

He started the farm reportedly from £2.50 and the brand now earns £302 million a year and supplies the UK with over 2.7 million turkeys over the Christmas period.

Mr Matthews isn’t just a UK icon with a more respectable rags to riches story than most (think of what Jordan did to earn the title) and while consumer confidence in his brand did drop a little this week and sales dropped a lot, the reassurance campaign is actually his face on the front page of The Sun with the headline “Sorry”.

To put it into context, two other major food producers also made blunders this week, and they are lacking any reassurance effort. Cadbury’s recalled almost their entire Easter line due to lack of allergy warning labels and M&S recalled its houmus, the line that was out of date on 15 February suggesting that there is a hefty number of people out there with salmonella right now. These two brands have done nothing but issue a statement and frankly, Cadbury’s should be a little more worried after last summers’ salmonella scare.