Consumptionella

Originally, Italians used “pasta gianduja” in sandwiches for lunch.  In Italian, “pasta” means paste and “gianduja” is in reference to an animated character on their advertisements.  Ferrero found that children would discard the slices of bread and solely consume the pasta gianduja.  He brainstormed ways to combat the  issue and adjusted the texture so that mothers could easily spread the hazelnut paste onto a slice of bread.  Eventually, Ferrero named the revised product “supercrema gianduja” due to its spreadability.  In 1964, “Nutella” became the new name, using “nut” from “hazelnut” and “ella”  in order to make the product sound Italian and catchy at the same time (History of Nutella).  Nutella’s popularity grew and eventually, the United States began importing the hazelnut spread from Italy.  Beginning in 1983, Ferrero began distributing Nutella to northeastern United States and soon after, to other parts of the world.  This showed how quickly the product became globalized.  It has been marketed as a method to implement whole grains into children’s diets, causing mothers to buy the product for a quick breakfast for the kids.

A 13 ounce jar of Nutella at Walmart costs $3.48, averaging at $0.27 per ounce (Nutella: Hazelnut). According to Forbes, Ferrero earned $10.5 billion dollars in revenue in 2012.  $6 billion of that went to the family (Michele).  Since Ferrero is a private company, little information could be found on how much the company’s workers get paid.  From the information given, it can be inferred that the owners receive the majority of the revenue while the company’s employees do not get paid nearly as much.

Commodity fetishism refers to the magical qualities attached to a product for an added value more than its material worth.  According to Marx, “the mysterious character of the commodity. . . reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these thing.” (Marx).  He compares commodity fetishism to religion and states that labour is immediately associated with the commodity that is produced.  The product gains value of utility once it is exchanged.  Nutella’s slogan is “spread the happy.”  The American commercial for Nutella features a busy mother of three with a dog barking in the background talking to the viewer about how she relies on Nutella to feed her children a breakfast of their preference.  Mothers and their children make up the majority of the target consumer audience.

The commercial uses words like “morning”, “delicious”, “perfect”, “quick”, “easy”, and “simple” to convey the message of Nutella as a breakfast spread for that mothers can serve to their picky children.  Their other commercials feature urbanized individuals sporting pearly white teeth with smiles and laughs.  The consumers tend to be on-the-go, which implies that the hazelnut spread is for even the busiest of people.  In one scene, a woman in an office with white-collar attire is seen spreading Nutella onto a slice of green apple.  This shows that the spread can be eaten with healthy fruits as a quick snack at work.  This also reveals that Caucasian, middle class, women in their 30s and 40s buy the product. The final image reveals a pancake with Nutella spread in the shape of a smile.  The company’s use of smiles assists in marketing the magical qualities of Nutella as a source of happiness while eating a balanced diet.  Furthermore, going off of the play on words of “spread”, the jar of Nutella is passed on from person to person.  The product is viewed as designed to be shared since someone is always seen serving someone else a slice of bread or fruit with Nutella.

The success of Nutella is partly due to Ferrero and customer’s use of social media to spread the word about the product.  A similar strategy occurs with healthcare.  According to Gupta, Tyagi, and Sharma, social media has been used to promote education of public health which enables health professionals to extend their impact directly to the public especially during emergencies or large scale catastrophes.  Mayo Clinic is a non-profit website which consists of facts along with opinions and first-hand experiences.  Mayo Clinic’s Facebook page contains personal posts from patients as well as employees.  The medical research group believes when patients share their experiences, their peers would see it and the chances of them spreading the message would increase.  The article concluded that “user generated content and multi directional communication flow makes for best choice for faster spread of public health messages and improves functional health literacy of general population” (Gupta).  This shows that the use of social media when applied to Ferrero’s product would increase the odds of Nutella’s slogan “spread the happy”.  

The website for Nutella has customer generated stories which utilizes the hashtag #NUTELLASTORIES.  Customers have a chance to share recipes, photos of their nutella jars, and their love for the hazelnut spread to world.  Ferrero hosts a Nutella Day on May 25th.  This past year was Nutella’s 50th birthday.  According to the Nutella Stories website, Europeans, North Americans, Russians, and Middle Easterners were the ones to show appreciation for Nutella’s 50th birthday.  Urban dwellers have access to technology, where images could be posted and shared on the Internet.  This reveals that those of the global north or urbanized regions are the target consumers of the product.