In my humble opinion, the Clark Bar & Zagnut were terribly marketed. I remember the bars but I never tried one. I'm sure they were good but there wasn't a reason to "risk" trying it. The first rule of marketing, convince the consumer that he NEEDS & WANTS the product. How can you do that with BORING advertising & packaging? Look at this ad from a December 1977 comic book and see if you agree.

The Clark bar packaging is red, white & blue, which is great. The problem is, the font is old fashioned & the shade of red is boring.The Zagnut bar had an even more boring font & coloring. This is just my humble opinion, but I'm sure many people would agree. I mean, the company which manufactured the candy filed for bankruptcy in 1995. The Pittsburgh Food and Beverage Company was formed when Beatrice Foods sold their candy business, in 1983. It is surprising that it lasted from 1983 to 1995, with the same boring packaging and advertising.




It is possible that they thought their customer wanted a nostalgic looking candy bar. That is understandable, the big candy companies had a huge part of the business. Finding a niche is a safe idea. The trouble is, you can't get bigger when you are being safe. If they were trying for a nostalgic look, why were they marketing it to a young audience, in a comic book?

The current company which owns the brand, bought it from the bankruptcy court. I have no idea what the candy bars look like today. I'm only talking about the candy bars when they were a part of the Pittsburgh Food and Beverage Company.

The above comic book ad placed the bars on their sides. Why were they trying to make it difficult for the customer to see the brand names?  I think a BETTER ad would be like the ad below:



In my opinion, the MOST IMPORTANT words are the brand names. The tag line "Get Rich and Famous," is secondary.

Oh well, just me ranting about something that happened 15 years ago. WHO CARES? 20/20 hindsight is easy.









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