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POT NOODLE

This case shows how planning sawthe need to free Pot Noodle from itsself-obsessed world of subversiveirreverence. Bringing lapsed usersback to Pot Noodle required thebrand to have a strong opinion aboutits role in the modern food world.Having uncovered the truth – that it’strashy – a wider perspective on thelives of lapsed users allowed us tore-frame this trashiness as illicitpleasure.

The ‘Slag of allSnacks’

HIGHLY COMMENDEDHHCL / Red Cell

Campaigns for established product brands (over £2m)sponsor: Millward Brown

Planned by: Andy DaviesAgency: HHCL/Red CellClient: Unilever Bestfoods – Pot Noodle

06 Pot Noodle 4/2/05 3:00 pm Page 1

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New owners with big plansPot Noodle is the first food many people prepare for themselves. As such it is apotent symbol of independence from parental control. With a personality otheryouth brands would kill for – bold, irreverent, subversive, it is an icon for youngpeople.

Buoyed by having such a potent brand in their portfolio, new owners UnileverBestfoods set the ambitious growth target of doubling the size of the brand in fiveyears.

Yesterday’s brandUntil 1997 Pot Noodle had the market to itself. Then Supernoodle re-launched,shifting from a side of plate accompaniment to being a foody nosh snack.Supported by salient, funny advertising that captured the imagination of theimportant 16-24’s, Supernoodle grew dramatically. The brand was newer, fresherand seemingly more in tune with the times than Pot Noodle.

The world had changed radically from the days of crappy rehydrated foods. Tothe slightly older eater, using a saucepan and eating a product with less MSG anda few more food values was more in tune with both the times and where they wereup to in life.

Supernoodle had effectively repositioned Pot Noodle as yesterday’s brand,threatening our iconic status at the heart of youth culture.

A personality in search of a propositionThis drift of Pot Noodle towards being yesterday’s brand had happened as a resultof advertising campaigns over the years doing a great job at fueling personality,but to the exclusion of a core truth which defined a role for the brand. PotNoodle had become obsessed with its personality – it was locked in a world of itsown subversive irreverence. A sort of brand autism. Meanwhile consumers weremoving on to a more relevant brand.

It became clear that communication desperately needed a backbone – to helpthe brand regain a role and contemporary relevance in young peoples’ lives.

If we could apply our irreverent personality to a truth about the brand, theresult would be an idea that would be difficult to ignore.

An opinion was critical to meeting the challengeAn opinion is useful to create an impact in today’s over-saturated communicationworld. Expressing a strong opinion about yourself or your role in the world canhelp communication work more effectively. An opinion cuts through, gets areaction and causes debate. The conversations that the brand starts are thencarried on, and the message gets amplified.


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Trying to win back occasional/lapsing users, from a more modern relevantbrand in tune with the times (Supernoodle), to a brand they probably startedeating as a sign of rebellion when they were thirteen, was going to be tough. PotNoodle needed to have a strong opinion about itself and its role in a world of foodthat had moved on.

Despite having its problems, Pot Noodle is incredibly successful. Five pots aresold every second. By rights its dehydrated format should have meant it died outyears ago along with Smash and Vesta curries. And yet it still thrives.

An earlier semiotic study had uncovered an inherent wrongness and a willfulperversity in the brand. This suggested that Pot Noodle could be knowingly flyingin the face of modern food trends and healthy eating. All of this gave usconfidence that somewhere, within this brand, was a strong opinion about itsrelevance and role in the current world. We just needed to uncover what it was.

Loyalists were unhelpful When looking to understand what your brand is all about, conventional wisdomsays you turn to your loyalists.

Typified by students, the life of a Pot Noodle loyalist revolves around drinking,clubbing, taking drugs, shagging and sleeping. Everything else has to fit inaround that – including food. Pot Noodle is brilliant for them. It is quick, hotand tasty. It requires no thought, no effort and no washing up.

Although it was encouraging to find the brand playing such an important rolein their lives, we didn’t find it very useful for uncovering an opinion about its rolein the wider food world. Users just accepted Pot Noodle for what it was to them-an ultra-convenient snack. And convenience isn’t much of an opinion.

To define a role in the world of contemporary food we needed to talk to thosewho were more heavily influenced by this world – our lapsing marginal consumers(rather than our loyalists who hadn’t yet moved into it).

Lapsing users reveal the shocking truthBrand essence research told us Pot Noodle had two competitive strengths overSupernoodles:● It’s an all-consuming eat● It makes no pretence to be anything other than artificial

To core users this was part of why they loved the brand. However, to lapsing users this was seen as its weakness. It reflected the fact that

to them Pot Noodle was trashy – an experience that left them with feelings ofdirtiness and guilt.


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That trash has no place in my worldOccasional/lapsing users have typically reached a stage in their lives where theylike to portray an image of nest building and meaningful relationships. They area few years out of college and altogether more grown up now. Gone are the daysof one-night stands and pissed-up weekends with their mates.

Supernoodle fits (better than Pot Noodle) with this lifestage. They still had theneed for quick tasty snacks, but something a bit less trashy and that required somelevel of ‘cooking’ was more in tune with where they were up to in life.

That was the theory at least.

Exposing their dirty secretThere appeared to be a contradiction – they were judging Pot Noodle to be trashy,and yet they indulged in other trashy behaviour quite happily – TV, tabloids,celebrity gossip. What was different about Pot Noodle?

They saw Pot Noodle’s trashiness as being associated with a whole ‘unhealthy’lifestyle that was in their past now. Pot Noodle symbolised a lifestyle they wantedto think they had moved beyond.

And yet behind this mask of adult respectability, further conversation revealedthat they were not sure they were quite ready for this grown up world.

They still craved aspects of their old lifestyle – nights out on the piss, illicitsnogs (or more) on a night out. As they opened up they revealed occasionallapses. All the more precious now life had moved on, they were reported withobvious pleasure. These people still had, and gave into, their baser urges. Theyjust kept them under wraps most of the time.

A similar pattern emerged of their occasional lapses back into Pot Noodle.Often on the same occasions (the end of a big night), or perhaps home alone oneevening when they wouldn’t be judged for it. They were slightly embarrassed tosay that they still really enjoyed indulging in them as they had once used to. Theyknew they were trashy, that their diets were supposed to have moved on, and yetwhen the desire struck nothing else could quite satisfy the craving.

This wider understanding of lapsing users gave us our breakthrough. PotNoodle was being used and enjoyed in a similar way to other illicit experienceswhich they had tried to consign to their past. It represented an illicit pleasure –something they knew that they shouldn’t still enjoy, but secretly they craved andgave into once in a while.

The opportunity for advertising was clear – to celebrate the illicit pleasure of aPot Noodle, making it emblematic of a lifestyle that had been left behind and yetwas secretly still craved. Doing this would bring their dirty secret out of the closet,give Pot Noodle a role, and hopefully create a hornet’s nest of demand.


The proposition Pot Noodle satisfies an unhealthy urge was the opinion we hadbeen looking for.

The creative ideaThis powerful opinion about unhealthy urges was the spur to a bold and brandedcreative idea – to use illicit sex as a metaphor for the tempting dirtiness of PotNoodle.

TV : Desperate Dan

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“Nice sandwich dear?”“Yes its lovely”

“I love Kate. Its just these sandwiches.I need something filthy.”

”Do you do Pot Noodle?”

“That felt so wrong and yet it felt so right.”

“Round the back in 2-minutes”


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The advertising created a world where food was sex. In this world a sandwichwould be the missionary position, a slice of pizza the wheelbarrow perhaps, andPot Noodle would be the dirtiest, sleaziest sex imaginable.

We created situations where people would get corrupted and sent off thestraight and narrow – such was the power of this dirty temptress of a brand.

We had a bold strategy, a brave creative idea and we needed a superlativeendline. Pot Noodle was the ‘Slag of all Snacks’.

Expressing this idea in the strongest possible terms captured brilliantly thebrand’s irreverence and subversiveness. It felt so wrong and yet so right.

The campaignThe campaign used TV, cinema, posters and radio to give breadth to the idea.Dramatising the different types of illicit sex that Pot Noodle can be – fromprostitution to pornography, from having affairs to S&M – the campaign quicklybuilt a picture of a seedy food underworld in which Pot Noodle reigned as thesleaziest snack of all.

Someone else blowing our trumpet“HHCL is showing no signs of senility in the strategic thinking dept. Sound as itever was...What a great campaign. It’s dark (really dark), it’s funny, it’s stupid, it’shonest, it’s trouble, it’s appropriate, it’s laser targeted, it’s classic Howell Henry”. Trevor Beattie, Private view.

A badge of honour for usersThis strategy came from lapsing users. We needed to check the campaignresonated for core users too. They loved the brutal honesty with which wepositioned the product. The campaign makes using Pot Noodle a badge ofhonour in their generally unhealthy lifestyle, giving them something to revel in.And the urge bit was definitely something they could relate to.

The boldness and honesty of our approach proved to be ‘on brand’ and builtboth relevance and respect with the core audience.

Creating effective debateAfter the campaign broke it caused controversy and debate. The end line waseventually banned (changed to “It’s dirty and you want it”). Debate is a naturalconsequence of having and expressing a strong opinion. It is useful becausepeople carry on the conversation you’ve started, free-of-charge.

We became as famous for not being allowed to say ‘Slag’ as for saying it. Itworked to amplify the brand’s message. It stretched the budget and receivedmassive coverage in non-paid for media. This all helped the campaign achieve


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TV : Bombay Bad Boy

“I’ve brought the usual filth”

“Be warned. It opens doors to newworlds of burning pleasure”

“But if you really want to go dog,this is new. Bombay Bad Boy.”

“But I like it!”

“Oh it hurts”


Radio : Hotel Room

amazing tracking and business results. It was voted best value campaign of 2002by Marketing Magazine, useful in the tough economic climate.

Importantly, the client had such a depth of brand understanding that itallowed them to stand by the bold approach of selling their most profitable brandby being derogatory about it.

What this sordid episode shows...This case shows how planning saw the need to give Pot Noodle a backbone, to freeit from its self-obsessed world of subversive irreverence.

Bringing lapsing users back to Pot Noodle required the brand to have a strongopinion about its role in the modern food world. Having uncovered the truth –that it’s trashy – a wider perspective on the lives of lapsing users allowed us toreframe this trashiness as an illicit pleasure. It led us to the proposition that PotNoodle satisfies an unhealthy urge – the strong opinion we’d been looking for.

MVO: Try not to imagine,three women and two men in a hotel room doing Pot Noodle.

SFX: Mixed guzzling and slurping.This becomes more frantic.A horse neighs.

MVO: You imagined it, didn’t you?And I bet you even saw a horse there as well.You sick wierdo.

FVO: Pot Noodle: The...SFX: Horse whinneying.

FVO: ...of All Snacks.

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