How to tranform a business

At Burton’s Biscuit Company, a business transformation has been underway since 2010. The organisation more than trebled its year-on-year profits in its most recent accounts to January 2011 and gained both a new chief executive and executive team.

Yet the transformation is more than financial, claims chief marketing officer Stuart Wilson. He says it also represents a wide-scale shift in corporate culture at the firm.

“The transformation is on several different levels. Clearly, it’s a transformation in business performance from a shareholder’s point of view. And in terms of a strategic transformation, we will be a far more branded organisation,” he argues.

Wilson is referring to five biscuit brands that are expected to drive future growth at the company, which is the second-biggest biscuit manufacturer in the UK after McVitie’s owner United Biscuits. Burton’s five key brands are Maryland cookies, Jammie Dodgers, Wagon Wheels, Lyons and Cadbury Biscuits – which Burton’s licenses from the Kraft-owned chocolate maker.

Focusing tightly on a set number of growing areas, such as core brands, is an important part of transforming an organisation. Much of Burton’s boost in performance has been put down to the successful performance of the Cadbury licence, under which Burton’s manufactures Cadbury Fingers and other chocolate-covered biscuits.

As well as creating new branding for many of its individual biscuit products, the company has undergone a corporate rebranding. It changed its name in November 2011 from Burton’s Foods to Burton’s Biscuit Company.

Wilson, who became chief marketing officer in September 2010, says the name change was intended to reflect the company’s single-mindedness as a maker only of biscuits (see box, below). It previously made savoury snacks such as Potato Puffs, but these had been discontinued by the mid-2000s, owing to the highly competitive nature of that sector.

Wilson says: “We wanted something that better represented who we were. We didn’t want to lose our heritage – we did explore whether we should change the name [from Burton’s], but we felt it had real merit and gave everybody a reference from the past to the present to the future.”

As part of its new corporate brand identity, Burton’s added a new motto to its logo: ‘Making every day more of a treat’. This is a clear acknowledgement that treats are its core business – and treats, as opposed to less indulgent kinds of biscuit, are a higher-value and more profitable product segment, which is why Burton’s concentrates its efforts there. It is faster growing than the value market too, Wilson says.

But he adds that the company also wanted the slogan to have resonance for employees. Getting the entire organisation engaged is a key part of successful transformation. He notes: “If we can make coming to work every day more of a treat, that goes a long way.”

Employee relations haven’t always been plain sailing since the business transformation got underway. Burton’s closed a biscuit factory in Moreton, Merseyside, in December 2011, with the loss of 219 jobs, which angered local MP Angela Eagle. The company did, however, revise its original closure plan and retained the chocolate refinery on the site in co-operation with the Unite trade union, which preserved 60 jobs that would otherwise have been lost and led to a capital investment of £2.8 million in the facility.

Wilson says Burton’s UK manufacturing is an important element of the business and the brand, despite its being majority-owned by US and Canadian investors since 2009. “We think it is important that we are a British-based company. All our manufacturing is done in Britain. We now have four manufacturing sites, three of which are making biscuits and the other is the chocolate refinery,” he explains.

Britain remains important for Burton’s future sales growth, despite its ambitious international expansion targets. In 2010, around £40 million of Burton’s £320 million turnover – one-eighth – was made outside the UK. There are targets to treble overseas sales over five years. Currently, however, most sales still come from Britain and with a 10% share of the biscuit category, Wilson says the company is far from reaching saturation point in its home market.

The Britishness of its brands, particularly Cadbury, is also helpful for marketing purposes in this country, he adds, as are the brands’ established links with traditional occasions and festivals. There was a marketing push to ensure that Cadbury biscuits and Jammie Dodgers featured at street parties for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in June and Christmas is obviously an important period for sales.

It might seem strange that Cadbury, a licensed brand that doesn’t belong to Burton’s, is such a large part of the business, but Wilson says the company treats it like one of its own. He says: “The consumer doesn’t see the difference, so the approach to marketing is no different. We approach it as we would any of our brands.”

Wilson has had to work hardest on Burton’s own biscuit brands to realise the kind of performance the company wants from its business transformation. It has needed to innovate and sometimes reinvent long-established products.

The company has overhauled the branding, communications and packaging of Wagon Wheels to appeal to teenagers and has also introduced several new product variations across its brands. These include Toffee and Choccie Dodgers, expanding on the original jam formula.

Burton’s has used the Lyon’s marque to consolidate several other brands under one banner, including Viscount and Jam Teacakes. These are intended mainly to serve the value end of the market, with a proposition that focuses on traditional biscuits.

The intention of Burton’s new product development is to bring in new consumers, as well as creating new associations with specific occasions. And targeting teenagers is an attempt to expand the company’s age range of consumers upwards.

With the relaunch of Wagon Wheels, however, there has been a more profound change, Wilson says.

“It is a brand that is reasonably familiar to people of my age, in their mid-40s. Our whole thrust is that we are going to go back to what the brand was when I was a teenager. But we are going to go and talk to a new generation of teenagers, for whom the old brand had no relevance or meaning. So we are going to take all the core meanings of what the brand was about, but change the identity and presentation.”

All these initiatives have had positive results so far and have increased the brands’ market share, says Wilson. And the principles behind the Wagon Wheels rebrand reflect the business transformation of the company as a whole.

Burton’s is branching out, reaching into new international growth markets and making itself more relevant as a 21st-century business. But it is also trying to keep in mind where it first put down its roots.