Is it an Aldi fish or a Saucy fish? A fishy tale continues…

I don’t think people necessarily need persuading to try alternatives to brands – pricing and common sense will see to that for those of us not beguiled by adverts. They don’t need to be made to look similar to make us do that. Providing they are clearly distinguishable then they should not be misleading, but deliberately packaging them to appear similar to a brand is trying to cheat the consumer – and we don’t want that, do we?

Traditionally, manufacturers used very distinctive branding and there was no attempt to confuse consumers. I’m thinking of Heinz/Crosse & Blackwell for tinned soup or Cerbos/Saxa for salt. This all changed when supermarkets started producing own-label imitations of popular products and they needed to associate their version with the favourite. Eventually, they progressively eliminated competing brands so there was only the own-label product and one other brand available. In those circumstances, I don’t see the need to mimic the major brand. Pyschologically, customers might feel that if a supermarket’s own product cannot stand on its own feet then it probably isn’t as good [although it might still be better value]; it hinges on whether price or quality are the key criteria. Just looking at our most recent Sainsbury’s order, I see that 61 out of 80 lines were JS own-label items. I used to prefer the stylish and understated design of Sainsbury’s packaging with simple graphics.

There’s still a lot of snobbery associated with packaging. Aldi and Lidl hardly trade under their own names on their products as they have both created quasi, ‘sounds like’, brands to suggest the products are equivalent to famous brands, and their mimicking of major brands – which they don’t even sell – has reached new heights. As Which? has found, many of their products are just as good as, if not superior to, and are much better value for money than, the original, but there is a sense that people don’t want the discount stores’ names in their cupboard

Plagiarism by an author or infringing patent copyrights is against the law. Deliberately packaging to mimic a bigger well known brand is at worst simply fraudulent or at best free-loading on R&D and marketing /distribution which requires big investment. In many instances, the mimic packaging hides the fact that the Aldi or Lidl substitute ( because they are far and away the worst offenders) contains ridiculous amounts of sugar.
As a simple example- not quite copycat but trying to illustrate a point. Lidl sell a luxury Fruit & Nut Muesli which purports to have won all sorts of awards from Good Housekeeping, Grocer Food & drink etc. All the fruits have added sugar . Total sugars 30.4g per 100gms. A commercial comparative Jordans Fruit and Nut 24.9g per 100gms. Also Jordans have higher fibre and lower calories- an altogether healthier option although still not great.
So my main demands of labelling would be much more prominence to sugar and salt content that would carry warning labels for excessive added sugars .I would like to see the major manufacturers take on Lidl and Aldi with a few court cases and am surprised there have not been any. Starbucks , Macdonalds etc protect their brands aggressively. Kraft and Nestle are powerful enough to do the same. The absence of such cases makes me more sceptical then ever.
When smaller producers breakthrough into supermarkets e.g. Yeo Valley , then they cannot necessarily afford such litigation and that is why I support Which? in trying to stamp out this practice. Copying can ultimately impact the margins of smaller producers and then we complain when they get taken over by American giants such as Kraft