Walkers Crisps

With a 5.2% growth in brand value, Walkers is now worth £424.5m, a healthy increase on the previous year's figure of £403.6m.

The company attributes its success to a combination of product launches and a switch to cooking with sunseed oil for all its products, including Sensations (which take 89th position in this year's Top 100), resulting in saturated fat reductions of up to 80% compared to their equivalents five years ago. Overall salt content is also down by a quarter.

The company has been successful in sourcing its potatoes entirely from British farms, a useful marketing point and a means of reducing food miles.

“Our consumer research tells us people are increasingly concerned with the origin of their food and they welcome our commitment,” says Walkers marketing vice president Jon Goldstone.

Those potatoes are finding their way into an ever expanding range of crisps and snacks. Recent launches included Chilli and Lemon flavour crisps, aimed primarily at Asian buyers, claimed to be the first of their kind and a big success.

The company also introduced a wholegrain snack called SunBites, sold in three flavours (Original, Sour Cream and Cracked Black Pepper and Oven Roasted Onion and Rosemary).

The company describes its late-2006 launched Walkers Baked crisps as the most successful launch in the so called 'better for you' category for three years (see Ones to watch page 30).

This year the company is spending £3m marketing its baked products to 25-35-year-olds, and has added two additional six pack varieties (Mango Chilli and New Bacon and Cheddar), which will be promoted with fresh point of sale material.

Goldstone describes the sales success of Walkers Baked as “hugely incremental to the category as whole”.

Last year, the company invested £5m to promote the lower fat nature of its products, describing the promotion involved as a range re-launch.

2007 £424.5m
2006 £403.6m
yoy change 5.2%