Altoids: On Britishness and Capitalism

This post was born from the frustration of an unsuccessful shopping trip. I wanted Altoids. I checked the local supermarkets - Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda. None of them had it. My local independent pharmacy used to carry a few tins, but alas, no longer. As I made peace with poor substitutes like Fox's Glacier mints and Starbuck's After Coffee Mints, I reflected on the irony that such a quirky, idiosyncratically British brand was so popular in America - it was not unusual to see colleagues carrying Altoids tins from meeting to meeting back when I worked in the US - but was unknown in Britain. Perhaps that reflects British identity, which, like India's unity, is more apparent from without than from within.

However, after a little Google powered research, I was left reflecting not on the subtle ironies of Britishness, but on the brutal nihilism of business. Altoids are no longer British. The red and white tins no longer proudly say Made in Great Britain. The factory in Bridgend, Wales, which used to supply the entire world with the curiously strong peppermint has been mothballed. Production has been moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, so that the product is made closer to its biggest markets, which are in America.

I am generally a fan of globalized, optimized supply chains, but this is ridiculous. It is like moving the Jack Daniel's distillery from Tennessee to Nanjing province so that the whiskey is made close to Shanghai, the world's largest market. It isn't Jack's if it isn't from Tennessee.

The advertising is no longer edgy or self-mocking. The official web site claims that: "Altoids honours the authentic - people who stay true to themselves no matter what. Those who are confident, honest and unwavering. Those who are CURIOUSLY STRONG."

Like, for instance, Altoids honours people who contribute to a blog about beautiful coffee. "For most people, coffee's just a morning beverage. But to the contributors of this blog, it's high art. Dedicated to looking past coffee's buzz, they find a subtlety that other's simply miss. Filled with striking imagery from the world's best latte artists, this cup of Joe is almost too beautiful to drink"

Altoids also honours Cameron Adams, who writes a blog called The Chattanoogan: "highlighting street style in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Cameron Adams' blog focuses on the well-hidden gems of a small town. Why, you might ask? The innocence and spontaneity of the images that capture the residents' local flavor seems to answer, why not?"

Why not, indeed. But does shrinkage ever occur?



I had to find out how this train wreck happened. How did The Man destroy Altoids' spirit by turning it into a motherhood and apple-pie candy from Chattanooga, Tennessee? It turns out that capitalism didn't just destroy Altoids, it also made it the icon it once was. Altoids' golden age came after it was acquired by Kraft, following a series of takeovers and leveraged buy outs.

Altoids were invented in the late 1700s, and were promoted for over a century as a "stomach calmative". The brand was owned first by Smith and Company of London, which became a part of Callard & Bowser-Suchard, which became a part of Beatrice Foods, which was bought and broken up by KKR, when Altoids was sold to Terry's of York, which was then acquired by Kraft General Foods of Chicago in 1993.

At this time, Altoids was a tiny brand, but with a devoted word-of-mouth following among the heavy-smoking, coffee-guzzling Seattle club set. A Kraft marketing manager called Mark Sugden, working with Leo Burnett Chicago, the agency which created the Marlboro Man, "got" this Seattle set's devotion, did not get a big advertising budget, and came up with a campaign that was consistent with what the brand already stood for. "We were talking to a cynical, smart, cutting-edge audience, and nothing mediocre was going to sell," says Burnett Creative Director Steffan Postaer. What sold were advertising posters that looked like this:



Market share rocketed from too small to measure to 10% in 1997, or $40 million. Something good had happened. A curiously strong breath of fun from old Blighty had blown into the lives of millions of people.

I guess the trouble with capitalism is that it doesn't know when to say "enough". Common sense says that a brand can't retain its quirky, smart, foreign, cynical, funny, laconic, iconoclastic soul if it gets very much bigger than 10% of the market. But woe betide the poor brand manager who might naively suggest this. Many new variants were launched, budgets were found for TV advertising. I wasn't able to find out how successful this SKU proliferation was; but in due course Kraft sold Altoids on (along with Lifesavers) to Wrigley for $1.4 billion amidst talk of revenue "headwinds" in 2005.

Wrigley closed the plant in Bridgend and increased capacity utilization at an existing plant in Chattanooga. The humour in the advertising drifted from under-stated to over-the-top, from Sir Humphrey Appleby-funny to Borat-funny. Somewhere along the way, the brand name became associated with enhanced blow jobs.

Mars acquired all of Wrigley for $23 billion in 2008. Altoids was obviously not the main point of the buyout. The current Pottery Barn-esque creative platform, wholesome authenticity, looks more like damage control than an effort to build a brand around either the British legacy or the dedication of the Seattle club cultists.

Maybe, though, there is something deeply British about this story, about inventing something that then goes abroad and takes on a completely different character. Like cricket. Or the English language. Or democracy, or capitalism, or scientific method. Altoids is in good company. Maybe I can explain all this to my local pharmacist to get him to import some quirky Britishness from Chattanooga, Tennessee.