Taking A Step Back
It has now been a couple of weeks since Heinz officially announced the closure of the HP Sauce factory in Birmingham, England (blogged here) and to be honest, I’ve deliberately put off writing a follow up commentary until I’d had a chance to really let the implications of this announcement sink in. It is absolutely infuriating to see this historic brand being picked apart like this…little by little, week after week.
First, let’s go back to the day of the announcement on August 24th, 2006 when I was contacted by two individuals. The first was someone working for an English language Dutch television network wishing to conduct an interview. While I would have accepted the opportunity despite having serious doubts about seeing myself on television (shudders violently), the logistics of it made an interview impossible. The other individual to contact me was this colourful character, “Captain Beany” (pictured).
Captain Beany wrote:
CAPTAIN BEANY,LEADER AND SOLE CAMPAIGNER OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM BEAN PARTY IS WILLING TO ENDORSE HIS SAUCY COMMITMENT TO SAVE THE H.P SAUCE FACTORY IN BIRMINGHAM!
I WOULD LOVE TO MAKE A PLACARD PROTEST OUTSIDE THE GATES WITH OTHER COMPANY WORKERS AND GET SOME MEDIA PUBLICITY FOR YOU TOO!
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ACCESS MY APOLITICAL WEB SITE BELOW - www.nmbp.org.uk
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME IN THE NEAR FUTURE!
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!
CAPTAIN BEANY
I have since been in contact with Mr Beany, but as I explained to the Dutch media - living in Canada somewhat limits my ability to support the cause on the ground as it were. Alas Mr Beany I won’t be able to raise my placard with you outside the gates of the HP Sauce factory! I would invite you however to keep up the good fight which I’ll happily document on this site so all HP Sauce fanatics can continue to track your progress - albeit from afar.
I also made an attempt to get in contact with my “source” at HP Foods, to whom I offered my sincere condolences. Unfortunately I never received a response. I can only speculate that perhaps Heinz has purposefully put an end to that relationship, which is a real shame. When I first made contact with this individual, there was a sense of excitement in the tone of the emails which we exchanged. Things were going well at HP Foods with new varieties on the horizon and the “Save The Proper British Cafe” campaign was about to launch. How things have changed in such a short period of time!
Back to the present:
There now appears to be a legal battle brewing over the rights to use the famous British parliament logo. Tesco would like to use the logo on their own brand of brown sauce “Branstons”. I would presume the North American equivalent would be if Safeway did the same with one of their “Safeway Select” sauces.
There has been some healthy debate about which other brand to switch allegiance - Branstons being one of them, and while I understand where people are coming from I whole heartily disagree that the HP label should be re-assigned to another brand. Putting the parliament logo on another brand does not make it HP Sauce. It cannot. There is so much more to this brand than what is simply stuck on the bottle. It is the 100+ year old recipe within the bottle which makes HP Sauce..HP Sauce!
There lies the complication. Suppose a year from now Heinz is producing HP Sauce from its factory in Holland but it has lost the right to use the parliament buildings on its label. The recipe may have survived but what of the brand itself? Can it survive a re-branding under a Heinz label? I would have to argue that the general British public will finally wake up one day to a cold new reality and realise what has happened when they no longer see HP Sauce being sold on the shelves but rather some other bottle - perhaps of similar shape with a new label and a new name. How will they react when by that time it is all sadly far too late to do anything about it? It is a bit of their culture being stolen from them, plain and simple, and it is something the people of Birmingham already know all too well. No swapping of labels can change that.
