Joe Hildebrand: How shrinkflation marketing ‘rort’ works

With cost of living growing, shrinkflation is a new mastery of marketing’s dark arts, argues Joe Hildebrand.

When I first heard the term ‘shrinkflation’, I thought to myself, “There’s a cream for that!” Or at least one of those blue pills that seem to keep offering themselves up in my hotmail inbox.

But no, it’s actually a thing. And unlike those in my hotmail it’s apparently a big thing.

Shrinkflation is a new mastery of marketing’s dark arts. As we all struggle to deal with rising prices for the same old products, some too-smart-by-half marketers have flipped the economics by offering smaller products for the same old prices.

Two recent examples brought to my attention are a $55 meal at burger chain Milky Lane that seems to have mysteriously caught a case of the Ant Mans and a $10 slice of cake at Disneyland, which has stayed at the same low price while spontaneously embarking on its own weight loss journey.

Truth be told I am not cool enough to go to Milky Lane or rich enough to go to Disneyland, so I will have to take the internet’s word for it.

But the bigger truth is this is a rort that has been going on long before lettuces cost more than Lexuses and power bills cost more than Panama’s GDP.

Who could forget the subtle shrinkage of chocolate bars and chip packets even when times were good? This was the greatest marketing spin of all.

Our products are bad for you, the junk food companies subconsciously told us, and so we have generously reduced the amount of bad stuff in the portions we sell you. And the best thing is you won’t have to pay a cent more!

What selfless corporate citizens — if anything we should be paying them extra for their sacrifice.

And just like that a family block of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk went from something you could break into enough bricks to build a four-bedroom house to something you could melt down into the size of a Freddo Frog.

Looks like revenge is sweet after all.