Toothfish, Anyone?
Some products need new
names.
Imagine reading a menu
description of the following entree:
Grilled Patagonian
Toothfish topped with Chinese gooseberry salsa
Hungry yet? If you’re
like most Americans, these ingredients don’t sound exactly, um, delicious.
But they are! And you probably have eaten them before and thoroughly enjoyed
them. Let’s try again.
Grilled Chilean
Seabass topped with kiwi salsa
Better, right? Thymus
Glands with Prunes for dinner? No? How about Sweetbreads with Dried California
Plums? Better? I think so. What you call your product is not
irrelevant!
Years
ago, the brilliant marketers of the Patagonian Toothfish knew that their fish
was unlikely to be embraced by Americans with such an un-embraceable name. So,
they rechristened their fish as the more pleasing Chilean Seabass and voila!
The product has been so popular that it’s practically on the endangered
species list.
Those
clever marketers in New Zealand renamed the exotic Chinese Gooseberry as the
fuzzy, furry, friendly “kiwifruit” and the rest is history. It was
New Zealand’s most famous export before the Lord of The Rings hit the
screen.
And recently,
the California Dried Plum Board came to the recent realization that Prunes were
being unfairly maligned because of their high-fiber functionality. Dried
apricots carried none of the same baggage so it made sense to re-launch the
prune as a dried plum.
There’s a fish
formerly called Dolphin, that’s now known as Mahi-Mahi. While the dolphin
fish is not related to the mammals we love to visit at SeaWorld, nevertheless,
you can imagine little Billy’s horror at seeing his friend on the menu at
Red Lobster.
I can
think of a few other foods that could use a Marketing Moniker Makeover. Cases
in point:
Pork Butt:
Are you kidding me? Most people’s first reaction is, “Why would I
want to eat that
part?”
Trockenbeerenauslese.
Will someone please tell the German wine marketing board that Americans will not
drink wine, no matter how delicious, if it’s name contains more than 5
syllables. Can anyone pronounce
this?
Head Cheese.
No comment
necessary.
But
sometimes a cute name isn’t enough. A friend points out that the
Jerusalem Artichoke (which is neither from Jerusalem nor an artichoke)
didn’t exactly take off once it was rebranded the Sunchoke. Maybe using
the word CHOKE just isn’t a good idea when you’re trying to sell
something that people are supposed to eat.
Posted: Tue - March 22, 2005 at 06:08 PM