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The subtle art of brand repositioning has been dealt a blow by the most unlikely hand. Not that the repositioning is in any doubt, it’s the subtlety that’s gone.

Fisherman’s Friend, one of those wonderful brands born in mid-Victorian England and, miraculously, a survivor to this day, is to shed an image built up over 130 years in favour of something newer and bolder. The lozenge “specially formulated for Fleetwood deep sea fishermen working in Icelandic frost and fog conditions” is henceforth to be marketed as something between an aphrodisiac and a gob stopper.

The aim is to attract new and younger consumers, which is perfectly understandable. Thanks to the European Commission, the Fleetwood deep sea fisherman is a moribund species almost as rare as a herring, and, if the maker of Fisherman’s Friend is to survive into its third century, it must look beyond the trawler man’s ravaged throat.

But what Europe has taken with one hand, it apparently gives with another. Doreen Lofthouse, chairman of the company that bears her family name and manufactures the lozenge, says: “We are getting high sales among young people in Europe and we want to break into the youth market here.”

She is to be commended for drawing a distinction between Europe and “here”; not for the hard-headed Lancashire lass the foolish notion that Britain is at the heart of something called the European Union. Where she may, however, have been misguided is in believing Fisherman’s Friend is a wildly sexy product. Sexy, that is, not in the general sense of being attractive or exciting but in the specific sense of being closely identifiable with carnality.

This is to take the brand so far from its roots that it might as well be relocated on a different planet. The Fleetwood fisherman of yore was no doubt as virile a fellow as ever drew a netful of halibut from the icy depths, but I’m prepared to wager that, as he did so, his thoughts were far from lascivious. Icelandic fog and frost conditions have a shrivelling effect and are notoriously inimical to the male libido.

But such is the narrowness of perception and poverty of intellect in modern youth that its interest can be aroused only by the most obvious and simple pleasures, and of those sex excites more – just – than premium lager. With that depressing thought in mind, Lofthouse of Fleetwood is casting off its fustian cloak and donning a sequinned posing pouch.

A campaign costing 2m promises a “six-month burst of pure unadulterated smack-you-in-the-mouth advertising” designed to create “a new generation of suckers”. If there is a hint of self-mockery here, it is almost certainly unintentional.

The cliché beginning “pure unadulterated” usually concludes with some such word as “drivel”, but “smack you in the mouth” is earnestly contemporary and plainly closely related to those fashionable phrases “gob smacked” and “in your face”. It is a wonder that Fisherman’s Friend is not to be described as a “lozenge with attitude” (maybe it is).

Having once determined to take the low road, Miss Lofthouse does so with her foot flat down. Among the ads featuring the slogan “It’s a Bit Strong”, is one that shows body piercing. Another uses the image of lurid Soho-style peepshows, while a third is inspired by the calling cards left by prostitutes in telephone boxes.

There is the thinnest, unintentional link between these ads and the product’s original market. The customers who are drawn to peepshows, and who respond to calling cards promising Swedish massage are, by custom, decreed to wear greasy raincoats and to have a permanent drip hanging from one nostril. Just the sort of condition that calls for a Fisherman’s Friend.

But James Kelly, whose agency Kelly Weedon Shute created the campaign, takes it as self-evident that “to be seen as trendy” the lozenge should also been seen as seedy. “The manufacturers would like to make the Fisherman’s Friend the chosen confectionery for young people,” he says. “For that, we have to change perceptions.”

Should the campaign succeed, others might follow. Friar’s Balsam is perhaps in need of a changed perception, as is Dr Collis-Browne’s famous preparation. Both would no doubt benefit from wanton raunchiness. In the Fifties, a competitor of Fisherman’s Friend advertised itself with the euphonious slogan “Zubes are Good for Your Tubes”. The claim has since been withdrawn, possibly for the same reason that Guinness may no longer declare its goodness.

All that is required for a ban on such slogans is for an obscure academic researcher, in search of a reputation, to pump vast quantities of the active ingredients in, say, Zubes, into a hapless rat, and for the rodent’s obituary to be published in the British Medical Journal.

So, while it is possible to allude tangentially to the sexual allure conferred by sucking a Fisherman’s Friend, it would be unwise to suggest that the product is efficacious in a medicinal sense. For no rat subjected to a diet of sugar, liquorice powder, dextrin, menthol, edible gum and aniseed oil could long maintain the will to live.

And should the competitor wish to reposition itself in today’s climate, it might adapt its slogan to the light-hearted, smack-you-in-the-mouth “Zubes is Good for Your Boobs”.

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