The Wheat Thins brand is assuming a new identity with a complete departure from the name “cracker.” Instead of being defined as a platform for dill dip and sliced Swiss cheese, Nabisco Wheat Thins wants to be identified and consumed as a stand-alone snack, according to Andrew Adam Newman’s January 5 article, titled “Don’t Call It a Cracker: Wheat Thins Prefers to Be Billed as a Snack,” for The New York Times.
Wheat Thins has a long history of being “something like a cracker – more like a snack” and “snackable,” but now the word cracker has become the Lord Voldemort of the brand. The company has replaced the term “snack crackers” on the front of packages with “snacks,” a change that will be completed across the line in 2011.
Wheat Thins is already one of the least-topped crackers in the cracker category, and the brand is counting on younger consumers’ penchant for convenient and salty snacks to pave the way to pure snackdom.
Of course, once the difference between snack and cracker is explained (stand-alone vs. vehicle for other goodies) it all seems to make perfect sense. But as someone who’s been known to take down a sleeve of plain Ritz on any given Sunday, it seems to me like much ado about nothing. Does the average consumer make the distinction – consciously or unconsciously – between snacks and crackers at the point of purchase? Watching a commercial? Ever?
When you think to grab a snack between meetings or on your way out the door, are crackers not included in your mental list of options? How is a cracker not already a snack? What about the Cheez-It? A cracker, certainly, but practically impossible to dip and almost always eaten on its own.
What’s more, are Wheat Thins’ efforts fruitless? Without changing the product or the packaging, will Wheat Thins ever leave the company of Breton and saltines to join the ranks of potato chips and popcorn? Can one marketing push and a tagline change on the box undo decades of cracker-like everything?