As Unilever reportedly prepares to spin off Marmite, what do the public think of the savoury spread?

Unilever may be selling Marmite and its other food brands to McCormick, the American spice and seasoning manufacturer. It’s an opportunity to look at what the public really think of the iconic yeast extract spread, and if it is really as divisive as the “Love It Or Hate It” slogan suggests.

Data from YouGov BrandIndex  shows that the spread’s positive Impression scores (a measure of a brand’s likeability) are at 34.2, while negative Impression scores are 8.2. Net scores, as a result, sit at 26.0: indicating that the public are more than four times as likely to say they have a favourable opinion of it than an unfavourable one.

This holds true with our other, more specific metrics. Positive Quality scores sit at 33.1; negative only 2.9, for a net score of 30.2, suggesting that the public are eleven times more likely to consider it a well-made product than not. Value scores are closer, but positives (18.0) still outweigh negatives (5.2), for a net score of 12.8. Three times as many consumers think Marmite represents good bang for buck than think the reverse.

Consumers also report higher positive Satisfaction scores (29.4) than negative (0.8) – for a net score of 28.5 – and Recommend scores, which track consumer advocacy, paint a similar picture. Positive measures sit at 24.6 compared to a negative score of 6.0, with net scores at 18.6.

As for the sale, if Unilever passes its food business on to McCormick, it will provide a definitive answer to questions from last year about whether or not the company would shift its focus to personal care products. In any case, if Marmite does find itself under new ownership, it might be worth rethinking the tagline: it’s a brand that’s far more liked than it is disliked.

This article originally appeared in City A.M.