A Krafty stunt

Faced with the overwhelming rejection of iSnack 2.0, Kraft has done an about-turn and ditched the name of its new Vegemite cream cheese blend.

But in a twist that raises suspicions of the exercise being a marketing stunt, the company says it will ask the public to find yet another name for iSnack 2.0.

After five days of criticism, including thousands of posts on blogs and social networking sites, Kraft admitted it got the name wrong. A spokesman, Simon Talbot, said iSnack 2.0 - which was picked from 48,000 entries submitted by Vegemite lovers - had ''not resonated with Australians, particularly the modern technical aspects associated with it''.

The new name will be decided by mass vote. The company will announce more details tomorrow, ensuring yet more Australians will hear about the new spread. The half-million jars bearing the new name are destined to become collectors' items to be traded on eBay.

But experts are undecided over whether Kraft can turn a public relations disaster into a marketing triumph. Mat Baxter, strategy director at the media agency Mediacom, said opening the naming up to a popular vote was a good idea because it ''democratised the process''. ''Whereas before the public put forward their names only for it to be decided by a committee [of Kraft executives], here they are genuinely opening it up. If they succeed then they've just grown their marketing team from a few people to many thousands.''

Gerry McCusker, who has written a book on public relations disasters, said: ''It's not a PR disaster, yet. If anything this is edgy contemporary marketing.''

He said the company had been good at ''controversy management'', a term the PR industry uses for nimble-footed companies that turn a negative into an advantage. ''They've used controversy to secure engagement and they are responding very well,'' he said.

The experts could not say if the events of the past five days were a carefully orchestrated campaign. Kraft's Mr Talbot emphatically denied this, adding: ''The fact that we had hundreds of thousands of units printed up [with the new name] is an indication of our intentions for the name to succeed. However we are not so bloody-minded as to proceed with a name that people don't like.''

- © Fairfax NZ News