Cadbury fuses three brands to demote Nestlé’s Kit Kat

Cadbury claims to have knocked Nestlé Rowntree from pole position for the best-selling chocolate brand in the UK – but it has had to combine three product lines to do so.

Cadbury claims to have knocked Nestl̩ Rowntree from pole position for the best-selling chocolate brand in the UK Рbut it has had to combine three product lines to do so.

For the first time Cadbury has lumped the three separate Dairy Milk recipe variants together to create what it calls a megabrand.

The combined sales of Dairy Milk, Fruit & Nut and Wholenut – otherwise known as the CDM Megabrand – were 235m, making it the top seller in 1996.

Nestlé Rowntree, unsurprisingly, disputes the number two position of Kit Kat, which has been brand leader for ten years. Spokesman Paul Kirkwood says he thinks only four-finger Kit Kat sales have been counted and not two-finger.

Cadbury head of PR Richard Frost says: “Mars has for a long time been pushing Galaxy sales to include all recipe variants. So for a while we have thought that this is the right thing to do.”

But he admits that without the change, Dairy Milk would be number three in terms of sales over 1996, behind Kit Kat and Mars bar.

According to Cadbury figures, overall confectionery sales grew five per cent in 1996 to 4.9bn, and this year will exceed 5bn for the first time.