I Just Realised What ‘Hobnob’ Actually Stands For, And It’s Pretty Clever
We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about what Twix really stands for.
And now, we’ve learned that Hobnob is more than just a fun name ― after watching Channel 4’s The Secret World Of Biscuits, I learned that the name choice was down to some intense market research.
How?
Pam Langworthy, who helped to develop and market the oaty delight, managed the team who were challenged to make a new biscuit that consumers were excited about, but which was still economical and easy for McVitie’s to make.
Inspired by the flapjack, McVitie’s added oats to a new recipe for a different texture ― and the resulting biscuits were a hit with focus groups.
Langworthy found that those groups “said [the biscuit] was knobbly, because, you know, it wasn’t a very smooth finish in the way, for instance, Digestive or Rich Tea are,” she shared on the Channel 4 doc.
“And they said it looked as if somebody had made it at home, maybe made it on a hob” she laughed.
“And so, I wanted a name that was very easy to say and just rolled off the tongue. And so, ‘Hobnob,’” Langworthy revealed.
The name was controversial at first
Andrew Easdale, Langworth’s colleague at the time, was tasked with pitching the name to their bosses.
“There was a sort of ― I wouldn’t say a stunned silence, but there was a, um, hmmm, followed by, ‘couldn’t you call it something a bit more descriptive, like ‘oaty crunchies?’”
“I said ’no, it’s gonna be Hobnobs. We need a brand,” Easdale said; and it’s stuck since 1985.
“Huge demand for the original led to the introduction of the chocolate variety in 1987,” the McVities site says.
Not all heroes wear capes, right?
