Don't Knock The Monkey

So a report last month from TNS showed that Dairy Milk sales have been growing at less than 2%, while sales of Galaxy are growing at 12%.

The headline writers and integrated marketeers hit their stride. The Monkey on Drums ad didn’t work. And TNS had a nice bit of PR.

Now I don’t have the tracking stats but even accounting for the skew factor of working in the London ad industry bubble my instinct tells me that on the measures it should have been judged, it worked. Find me a hat and I’ll eat it if it didn’t.

So why has Galaxy outperformed?

I think the answer can be found further upstream than a single piece of communications, no matter how hairy it was.

Has Galaxy’s clearer focus on the chocoholic female market paid dividends? Is it down to their premium positioning? Or has their new product development and premium innovation machine simply done a better job?

I suspect it is a mix of both plus a few other factors so let’s not knock the Monkey. It was and is a fantastic piece of creative work. And who remembers the last Galaxy ad? Well I don’t but maybe that’s because I am not target market.