FMCG no WWW in IE?
Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) are the brands we see and use every day - including food, drinks, soaps, toiletries, and the like. And the major marketing campaigns surrounding these products mean we're frequently bombarded with their ads on our TV screens. So it's reasonable to think they would have a prominent position online, too. Reasonable, but not actually true in Ireland.
— Published October 16th, 2006 | by David Moore
In early 2004, the iQ Content team looked at the top ten brands (according to Checkout), and found there was only one half-decent site among them.
So what's the situation now?
1: Coca Cola, and 2: Lucozade.
There used to be sites at http://www.cocacola.ie/ and http://www.lucozade.ie but there's nothing in either place any more.
3: Avonmore
Avonmore have the same Flash-heavy and logic-challenged site they've had since 2004: http://www.avonmore.ie/avonmore.asp. It's hard to find any useful information there, and the latest news is from February.
4: Jacobs
On a biscuit quest you'd never find the parent company's site - the Jacob Fruitfield Food Group: http://www.jacobfruitfield.com - but you'd only be missing a few scant pages.
5: 7UP
According to the C&C site (they're the licensees in Ireland), "The Irish drink ten times as much 7UP as the average European consumer." But we still don't get more than a link to the US 7UP site.
6 Cadburys Dairy Milk
Despite the range of Cadbury's products sold here (the British site tells me the mighty Tiffin were withdrawn there in the 1950s), there's no Irish online presence for the company.
7 Brennans
Finally, a site that has information on it: http://www.brennansbread.ie/
There are recipes, a brief history, an outline of the product range - it's not fantastic, but it's something.
8 Tayto
The Tayto site http://www.taytocrisps.ie/ has a nice attitude, and you can order online for when you really want a giant box of crisps delivered to your door.
9 Danone
There's an Irish site for Actimel (http://ireland.actimel.com/), which seems to repackage material from elsewhere, but none of the other Danone products are represented.
10 Denny
Denny's products are mentioned in Ulysses, but are hardly mentioned on their parent company's site (http://www.kerrygroup.com).
Conclusion
Of the top ten, only three have dedicated Irish sites, and one of those is largely unusable. you could argue this type of product doesn't gain much from a website, but considering the large amounts of money spent in all forms of marketing, a site would seem a natural adjunct as a source of product and company information. Especially as many of these brands have good sites elsewhere.
Which might be part of the problem - Danone and Glaxo SmithKline (makers of Lucozade) for example, might see Ireland as only a minor part of their empire.
It's the smaller Irish-owned brands (Tayto, Brennans) that have sites. And Barrys Tea (just outside the top ten) has a solid presence, too: http://www.barrystea.ie. But there are Irish brand managers for all the mulitnational brands, and perhaps due to a lack of imagination in how to use the medium they're missing out a real opportunity.
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