Why Marmite spread sandpaper at cricket match
You love it or you hate it: The British spread classic Marmite continues to play on the fact that it is highly polarizing. And in doing so, it puts salt in the wounds of Australian cricket fans.
Some stories pass most people by in this country, even though they make big headlines elsewhere. For example, when it comes to cricket, the sport attracts virtually no interest outside the former British Empire, so any scandals pass us by relatively unscathed. Or does the term "Sandpapergate" mean anything to you?
This refers to an incident that caused a stir in the cricket world in 2018: Australian captain Steve Smith and his vice-captain David Warner were sent home from a Test match series in South Africa and subsequently banned for a year. The reason: they had tampered with the ball by roughening it with hidden sandpaper to alter its flight characteristics. The technique they were aiming at is called "swing bowling".
The case caused such a stir that even politicians - such as Australia's prime minister - intervened. Sandpapergate shook the sport and had far-reaching consequences. The Wikipedia article on the case comprises almost 30,000 characters. For the classic cricket nations, the Australian fraud attempt is omnipresent.
London agency Adam&Eve DDB used the sandpaper theme to spotlight client Marmite. Marmite is a classic British bread spread - comparable to the Swiss product Cenovis - that is either loved or hated on the island. The idiosyncratic yeast flavor is not to everyone's taste.
Advertising has always celebrated this fact. In 2013, for example, the agency showed how neglected Marmite glasses were rescued from households by Marmite rescuers and placed with new owners (Werbewoche.ch reported). At the "Marmite Gene Projects" Adam&Eve DDB had it scientifically proven in 2017 that Marmite love is genetic (Werbewoche.ch reported).
At the cricket test match between England and Australia, the creatives of London's most prominent agency had branded sandpaper distributed. The imprint: "Love it or hate it. We won't be tampering with it." ("Love it or hate it - we won't be tampering with it (or tampering with it)". The formula remains, even if many can't stand it.
It can be assumed that cricket fans did not have to read up on the subject matter to get the joke.
