Tunnock's have removed the lion rampant from their logo in a bid to sell more teacakes to the rest of the UK.
The Uddingston-based makers of caramel logs, caramel wafers and snowballs, launched an advertising campaign in England last month promoting the “Tunnock’s Great British Teacake” with a slightly altered logo.
Boyd Tunnock, the company’s managing director, said that campaign was based on popular BBC cake show, the Great British Bake Off.
Boyd told the Sunday Mail: “It was the idea of my son-in-law, Fergus Loudon, who is the sales manager and looks after advertising. You’ve got the Great British Bake Off and things like that these days.
“We could have said Scottish but you’re then promoting Scotland. We’re British.”
The 82-year-old added: “The vote said we’re British. We’re Scottish, however we’re still in Britain.” The biscuit magnate, who campaigned for a No vote in the independence referendum, said there were no plans to call the teacakes British in Scotland.
“We’d just say teacakes.” he said. “But we could probably call it the Great World Teacake as we sell them abroad as well, in places like Australia and Canada. And we’ve just started to sell them in Germany.”
Yesterday, as news broke, there was a call for a boycott of the company from a handful of Twitter users.
Any boycott, however, would likely make no dent in the sales of the company who reported an annual turnover of more than £50 million in November, which is an increase of about seven per cent. Just under a fifth of those sales come from international markets.
Last year was a good one for the company. There was a jump in sales immediately after the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow where giant teacakes danced about Celtic Park in front of a TV audience of millions.
Waitrose said that in the 24 hours immediately following the ceremony, sales jumped by 62 per cent.
David Jones, the supermarket’s supply chain director, said: ‘’We usually expect to see people marking major sporting events with a barbecue or a beer – but the sudden demand for Tunnock’s teacakes isn’t something we anticipated.”
Boyd said the Games had done the company “a good turn”. “They asked if they could use it. We didn’t pay any money but we got a great lift from it,” he said.
“However, if your product is not right, you won’t sell it.”
Profits were also given a boost when HMRC said Snowballs should be reclassified as a cake rather than a biscuit, meaning that they are now zero-rated for VAT.
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