How Percy Pig came to dominate the sweetie market, and win the nation's hearts
Last month, as outgoing CEO Stuart Rose told the press that "the worst effects of the recession [were] behind us", it was hard to imagine that there was a time not so long ago when the only thing keeping Marks & Spencer afloat was knickers. In the troubled years – roughly from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s – before it was reborn as the foodie destination for the busy office classes, the public perception of the high-street giant was that it was stodgy, out of touch and good for little more than clothing senior citizens and supplying reliable, value-for-money, unsexy underwear.
It's impossible to say exactly when or how that changed. Think M&S then and you might conjure up images of boil-in-the-bag meals and comfy slippers. Think M&S now and you may well be lucky enough to picture the bikini-clad Brazilian model Ana Beatriz Barros, an equally exotic array of orchids, melt-in-the-middle chocolate sponge puddings and the wholesome, reassuring face of Percy Pig.
Marks & Spencer has never been known for creating iconic brands or following fleeting fads (this is a store, remember, that chose not to accept credit cards until 2001); a sense of history and the bigger picture has always been part of its retail DNA. But somehow, in spite of the fact that he spent years sharing shelf space by the tills with such un-family-friendly products as bars of Swiss Extra Fine Dark Chocolate, Percy Pig – a jelly-and-foam confection flavoured with fruit juice – has emerged as something of a cult classic.
Loved by fashionistas (he made it into Vogue's "Hot List" in 2008), marathon runners, children, their mothers and anyone who ever needed sugary (but fat-free) help to make it through the office day, two Percy Pigs are now scoffed every second in the UK. And this in spite of no advertising, no mission statement and no snappy slogans. He brings home the bacon, too: more than 10 million bags are sold in the UK every year at a little over £1 a bag; you do the maths.
A Facebook appreciation group for Percy has, at the time of writing, more than 234,000 admirers. Lewis Hamilton told the M&S magazine that this was the one product he couldn't live without. Calvin Harris admitted to another magazine that he used to steal them before he became a famous pop star/DJ. A blog written by an ambulance controller tells of the time a crew was sent out to get some Percys only for a man to go into cardiac arrest nearby. "Fortunately," the controller writes in an entry entitled "The Percy Pig Incident", "G602's pig run had put them in just the right place... If the patient lives, it'll be entirely down to those Percy Pigs."
Quite how far these middle-class Haribos had entered the vernacular became apparent standing in a snaking queue at the end of a working day in a busy M&S Food to Go. As stressed Londoners inched towards the pay points desperate to avoid eye contact, one businessman at the till turned around and said loudly to a fellow suit: "Sorry mate, sorry, can you pass the Percy Pigs." Blank stares. "Er, the Percy Pigs. Yeah, the Percy Pigs. Can you pass the Percy Pigs." As Queue Man tried to outstare his feet, it became apparent that Till Man would not leave without his fruity booty. Pigs reluctantly passed, we could all move on.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
Leave a Reply