Dolmio warnings: corporate responsibility or marketing genius?

I used to work for Mars. I was not long out of university and it was a blue chip employer that people were desperate to work for – people still do aspire to work for Mars and they are right to in many ways. It remains the best employer I have ever worked for and it is known for providing a quite extraordinary employment experience.

I worked in the electronics division. Not many people even know that Mars has an electronics division. Do you remember when you used to put money in a vending machine and no product came out? Mars were equally fed up that coin mechanisms were unreliable and so they set out to develop one. They succeeded and today Mars Electronics handles over 2 billion transactions per week in more than 120 countries. You are way more likely to be experiencing a mars electronics product on a daily basis (vending machines, transport ticket machines/London underground/car parks, gaming machines, public telephone boxes etc) than you are to be consuming a Mars food product on a daily basis.

I woke up on Friday 15th April 2016 and turned on my mobile and there were messages from Radio5 Live and BBC London – could I contact them urgently for the breakfast show. I wondered what on earth the story could be – new obesity statistics? a journal article on my home turf? I could have guessed all day and would never have come up with the reality...

 

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