Vegemite is a salty yeast extract paste that Australians have grown to love. For the last 50 years they’ve been told that Vegemite is part of every kid’s healthy nutrition and that Vegemite keeps Australians strong.

And the band Men-At-Work helped firmly establish Vegemite as part of Australian’s pop culture and one could argue even helped spread the worldwide awareness of Vegemite.

The thing with Vegemite though is that it seems to be an acquired taste that you learn to love as a child. Some people (and that seems to include all of Australia and parts of Britain) love it, most people (that would be the rest of the world) hate it. As such, the taste is one of those very polarizing product attributes that could also be described as the product’s major weakness.

So it is interesting to watch Pizza Hut Australian launching a Vegemite pizza. To promote it, they brilliantly turned the product’s weakness (and its most distinctive attribute) into a source of cultural pride.

This is a great example of applying two of Positioning-Roulette’s principles: “Be part of culture” and “Give meaning to a brand’s weakness”.  An article about this campaign can be found on Adweek.