Where 'love it or hate it' came from: the 1996 BMP DDB campaign that rescued a fading brand by leaning into the half of Britain that hated the taste, and how the slogan escaped into everyday language.
Love It or Hate It Phenomenon
The polarizing nature of Marmite: taste science, genetic factors, psychological aspects, and the "Marmite effect" as a cultural metaphor.
Category: Love It or Hate It Phenomenon | View all articles
Why does Marmite taste like that? The science of the savoury hit
Marmite tastes the way it does because it is loaded with natural glutamates (the umami compounds), a lot of salt, and the dark, malty, slightly bitter notes from heating concentrated yeast. The intensity is the point, and it is why it divides people.
A bit Marmite: the jar that became an adjective
To call something 'a bit Marmite' is now official: the OED lists Marmite as an adjective for anything that splits people into love-it and hate-it camps, and it dates the metaphor to 1994, two years before the famous advert everyone credits.
Marmite in British popular culture: the verb, the meme, and the brand-name shorthand
It is hard to think of another food brand that became a word in normal British English. Hoover, in its day. Tippex. That is most of the list. Marmite is in it. If you describe a film, a politician, a footballer or a piece of new architecture as "a bit Marmite", everyone in the room nods.
Marmite is one of the longest-running memes on the internet
Bartle Bogle Hegarty wrote "Love it or hate it" for Marmite in 1996. Twenty-nine years later, half the internet is still using it. That is the kind of longevity ad agencies dream of and almost never achieve. The reason it travelled is that it does not actually sell Marmite.
London loves Marmite, Glasgow really does not
Consumer surveys have repeatedly shown the same pattern. In London and the south-east, roughly six in ten people say they either love Marmite or are happy to eat it. In Scotland and the north of England, that figure drops to closer to three in ten. The midlands sit somewhere between.
Whether you love or hate Marmite is, partly, in your DNA
A few years back, the consumer-genetics company DNAFit ran a study they called the Marmite Gene Project. The aim was to see whether the famous love-it-or-hate-it divide had a genetic basis, beyond cultural exposure and childhood imprinting. The answer, surprisingly, was yes.
The year Marmite swabbed your cheeks: the 2017 Gene Project
In 2017 Marmite asked the nation to spit in a tube. The Gene Project claimed your DNA decides whether you love or hate the jar, sold you a testing kit, and lifted sales 14 per cent. The marketing was brilliant, the science thin.
Vote for new members of the Marmarati
The society of elite Marmaite lovers, the Marmarati, is looking for 160 new members to form the "Second circle". These new members are voted on by YOU and I would ask you to vote for my partner Patrina (as seen in the photo) who is now 4 days overdue on giving birth to our first offspring!
BFBS radio interviewed me about Marmite
In 2009, Lynn Duffus of British Forces Broadcasting Service interviewed me about Marmite: how the site started among baffled colleagues in Boston, what the stuff actually is, the Derbyshire "Marmite dumping" scandal that turned out to be fertiliser, and the bagel-and-whipped-Philadelphia trick I have never bettered.
