Generic vs. Name Brand Taste Test

From an early age, we as consumers have been conditioned by the likes of Chef Boyardee and Chester Cheetah to reach for their products when grocery shopping. We assume that we choose name brands, like Cheetos, over their generic counterparts because the name brands are of higher quality. But is this always the case?

In this activity, students participate in a blind taste test that pits name brand foods against their private label (generic) equivalents.  Included in the taste test are the name brand/private label equivalents for: Sprite, Orange Juice, Bottled Water, Pop Tarts, Cereal Bars, Fruit Cocktail, Cheetos, Cheez-Its, and Froot Loops.

Students sample each product and then complete a form that indicates which product they believe is the name brand, and which they believe is the better of the two products.

Inevitably, students are not always able to correctly identify name brands in the blind taste test. This leads into a discussion (PowerPoint provided) of why name brand foods are more expensive, as well as the cost savings that we can recognize by substituting private labels for name brands.

Students Participating in Taste Test of Generic and Name Brand Foods

Lesson Resources

Worksheet: Taste Test Scorecard

PowerPoint Discussion: Generic (Private Label) vs. Name Brand Foods

Article: Dumped! Brand Names Fight to Stay in Stores

Lesson Extensions

• Marketing – this lesson could also be used in a Marketing course
• Personal Finance – I often add a component the requires students to devise a weekly menu and compare prices on the items at their local grocery store

Related posts:

1. Personal Finance Lesson: Being a Savvy Grocery Shopper
2. Personal Finance Lesson: Cell Phone Comparison Shopping and Research
3. Personal Finance Lesson: Miracle of Compounding

The two approaches could not be more different.

For example, your local bank may run a promotion that promises to give new customers a $25 credit when they open a checking account.

In the Minors, they give away the same $25, but instead of executing an electronic transfer or handing someone a check, they have fans step into a phone booth full of swirling, wind-blown cash and urge them to grab all they can in 30 seconds.

Another example.

Your local bank probably puts suckers at the teller window for everyone to enjoy. (I personally enjoy the Blue Raspberry ones).

In the Minors, they hire helicopters to drop buckets of candy and marshmallows onto the playing field.

Kids participate in Quad Cities "Mega Candy Drop" promotion

I’m not saying that either approach is wrong. When we go to the bank, we expect a certain degree of professionalism. Most people would not enjoy seeing their loan officer brandishing a squirt gun while sporting a cartoonish mascot outfit.

However, when we go to a ballgame, we expect to enjoy the experience. That’s why the tongue-in-cheek, don’t be afraid to laugh promotional style used by many Minor League franchises is so successful. It’s the right approach in the right environment.

High school athletics could be marketed in that same vein. Unfortunately, local amateur sports are either a). marketed like banks as opposed to family-friendly entertainment or b). not marketed at all.

A little creativity can go a long way towards changing that, and a good place for high school athletics to start is by implementing small contests into their game day schedules.

Getting Creative with Contests

As I discussed in the last post, Minor League teams fill down-time between innings with fun, interactive games that involve the fans. Since these contests are only 1-3 minutes in length, they could easily be integrated into any athletic event (half-time of basketball, between quarters in football, etc.).

Coming up with a good contest idea is surprisingly easy. Just think of your current sponsors and ask “what do they do, and how can we turn that into something fun our crowd can interact with?”

By using this line of thinking, you might end up with something like a Subway “Sing for Your Supper” contest where two fans sing the “$5 foot long” jingle. The best jingle, based on audience applause, would win a Subway gift card (provided by Subway, of course).

The Blue Eye pulls ahead during the Cedar Rapids Kernels' Eyeball Race

Even service businesses can get in on the act. The Cedar Rapids Kernels stage a between-inning eyeball race at every home game. If you’ve never seen an eyeball race, it is exactly what it sounds like. Two fans, each dressed in a huge eyeball costume, race across the field. It’s quite a spectacle. And it’s also quite an advertising opportunity for the local optometrist that sponsors it.

These are just two examples. The possibilities are as endless as your own imagination.

Providing advertising opportunities that go beyond signage on the field and logos on the back of a program provides a unique value for sponsors. It helps make their brand “sticky,” or memorable. When other businesses in the community see this, they will want to develop partnerships with the school as well.

Getting Creative with Theme Nights

Contests are great, but why settle for a few minutes of fun when you can go the extra mile and provide a whole evening’s worth of memories?  That is the idea behind the ever-popular “theme night,” a promotional strategy mastered by the Minor Leagues.

If you’ve never been to a theme night, the premise is simple: the team picks a topic and then weaves it into every aspect of what goes on at the park on that given night.

And, as the Minors have proven, any topic is fair game for a theme night. Here is a short sampling of some of the more popular theme nights from the past year, with links to their descriptions:

• Plumber Appreciation Night (South Bend Silverhawks)
  

  An awful Marilyn Monroe hands a program to a teen during the Altoona Curve's annual "Awful Night"

• Awful Night (Altoona Curve)
• Fan Bailout Night (Clinton LumberKings)
• Country Night (Bowie Baysox)
• Salute to Cows (Wisconsin Timber Rattlers)
• “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” World Record Night (Wilmington Blue Rocks)
• Break a World Record Night – Largest Kazoo Rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” (Northwest Arkansas Naturals)
• Face Your Fears Night (Bowie Baysox)

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Theme nights like these help Minor League franchises make a connection with fans. Instead of simply being spectators, the fans become a part of something bigger. They also create publicity for the teams involved. People want to know what happens at an “Awful Night,” or a “Face Your Fears Night,” and that curiosity often leads to attendance.

Why Get Creative?

For those involved in high school athletics, theme nights and contests provide an opportunity to do something that’s simply not being done at the amateur level. In Indiana, there will be over 1,000 high school football games played this year. Triple that in basketball and baseball. The approach to these contests is pretty much the same. Schedule the games, and if people show up, they show up.

For large high schools with powerhouse programs, this type of hands-off approach is fine – people will still pack the stands. But, those schools are in the minority.

If the student-athletes at your school are playing in front of more empty seats than filled ones, maybe it is time to get creative.

Next Time: Using technology to make a fan connection

Related posts:

1. Lessons from the Bush Leagues: Applying the Minor League Mindset to High School Athletics (Part I)
2. Silver Hawks Find Promotional Inspiration in Plumbers, Mustaches
3. Drying Paint and Growing Grass Highlight Altoona’s Seventh Annual Homage to Awful

There may be better ways to spend a summer vacation, although I can’t think of any. For two months this summer, I traveled around the country watching Minor League Baseball games, thanks to a Teacher Creativity Grant from the Eli Lilly Foundation.

A large crowd looks on at Smokies Park in Kodak, TN

Officially, the idea was to study the marketing methods used by Minor League Baseball teams, which happen to be so good that they’ve helped some Minor League franchises across the country to record attendance, recession be damned.

Unofficially, I am never at a loss for an excuse to go watch baseball.

In the course of my travels, I was also hoping to get some ideas to bring back to the classroom.

Ah, the classroom – where I teach Business to high schoolers who are sometimes (most of the time) more interested in shooting arrows at balloons with a cartoon monkey (God bless internet games) than learning business fundamentals.

And while I did come up with the inspiration for a handful of great lesson plans, I realized that nearly everything I was seeing at the ballparks – the wacky promotions, the entertaining mascots, and the carnival-like atmospheres – could easily be applied to high school athletics.

It may sound outlandish, marketing high school sports in the same manner that a professional sports league markets its product, but, the reality is that Minor League Baseball and high school sports already have a lot in common.

I’ll give you a few examples in friendly, bullet point format:

• Due to athlete turnover, both the Minor Leagues and high school athletics typically promote teams as a whole as opposed to individual players
• In most markets, fans will attend Minor League games regardless of how well the team is playing. In other words, it doesn’t matter much if the team wins. Fans attend the games to have fun and see young talent develop. Is high school that much different?
• Minor League teams, especially in the lower levels where the teams play in smaller towns, are a big part of their communities.  As a result, the fan mix at most MiLB games is a cross-section of hardcore fans, casual observers, uninterested socialites, and hyper-active youngsters. In a lot of ways it is the same type of crowd found at a high school sporting event.

Any high school athletics program, regardless of size, can adopt a Minor League mindset to help boost community interest, fan support, school spirit, and attendance – all of which lead to more money for the school.

A group of mascots discuss their gameplan.

So, as a back to school gift for Athletic Directors everywhere, I will be offering a four part blog series on the tenets of the Minor League Mindset and how they can be applied to high school athletics.

Part I: Focus on the Fan

It is hard to create a caricature of the “typical” Minor League Baseball fan, because the crowds that attend the games are so diverse. All age groups and levels of interest are represented at the ballpark. Yet, for all their differences, fans at Minor League games seem to have one thing in common: they all have fun.

So, how do these franchises go about entertaining fans ranging in age from infants to octogenarians? Most minor league front office people readily admit that it’s not always about the team on the field.

Sure, some of the fans are there to watch baseball. But, even big baseball fans would have a hard time mustering up enough excitement to go see a lineup like this:

Means – RF
Sappelt – CF
Puckett – 2B
Mendez, C – 3B
Brown, T – LF
Coddington – DH
Day – 1B
Wideman – C
Rojas – SS
Janke – P

Not exactly household names. Nevertheless, 8,584 people piled into Fifth Third Field in Dayton, Ohio to watch these Dayton Dragons take on the Fort Wayne Tincaps on July 2nd.

If it’s not the game itself, what’s drawing 8,000+ fans a night to Dayton, and other ballparks across the country?

Minor League baseball teams have an unrelenting focus on the fan. Everything they do is designed to entertain, and most of the entertainment is interactive. Downtime between innings is filled with contests, with the participants being plucked right from the crowd. Fans may race one another around the bases, sumo wrestle, dance on dugouts, sing karaoke, and play “Let’s Make a Deal” – all before the seventh inning stretch.

As one front office executive put it to me, “baseball is just a backdrop we use to perform our shtick.”

Fans not participating in the “shtick” are treated to what basically amounts to a live-action reality show. What nine-year old will be able to put on a Dragons uniform and race around the bases the quickest? Tune in between the fourth and fifth innings to find out!

All of these contests provide family fun and help turn spectators into participators and casual fans into season ticket holders. In addition, they provide a unique opportunity for your sponsors – an issue we’ll discuss next time.

A fan participates in a dice rolling game at Bowling Green Ballpark

Focusing on the fan also means providing a comfortable atmosphere. I visited over 20 Minor League stadiums this summer, and I don’t recall seeing a single scrap of paper laying on the ground in any of the concourses or men’s rooms. All of the stadiums were clean, all had good food (some obviously better than others) and regardless of where I was at, it was always easy to spot an usher if I needed something.

Adopting a Minor League mindset requires more from an Athletic Director than scheduling officials, chalking the field, and turning on the lights. It’s about creating an environment where people are always wondering “what are they going to do next?”

And, the beautiful thing is, adopting a fan-friendly focus doesn’t take a lot of extra money or staff. Work with students to develop theme nights and contests. Leverage your school’s existing website to advertise your programs (a topic which we’ll cover in part three). Partner with the booster club to find volunteers to serve as ushers/fan assistants.

In the end, fans that have fun at a sporting event will continue to come back. The Minor Leagues have proven that. There’s no reason why the same wouldn’t hold true at the high school level.

Next Time – Part II: Get Creative and Get Fans

What do these eyes have to do with drawing fans and providing value for sponsors? Find out next time.

Related posts:

1. Lessons from the Bush Leagues: Applying the Minor League Mindset to High School Athletics (Part II)
2. Kane County Cougars Thriving in Crowded Market
3. Micro-market Beloit Tries to Snap up Fans by Sticking to Basics

This negative image was flushed away over the course of one doubleheader on June 17 as the South Bend Silver Hawks, a Class ‘A’ affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks, celebrated Plumber Appreciation Night at Coveleski Field.

Plumber Appreciation Night at the Cove, as Announced on the Display Leading into the Ballpark

The stadium wide “thank you” to plumbers included a toilet paper giveaway (above and beyond the free tp fans have access to in the ballpark lavatories) and a number of on-field contests that gave fans the chance to become acquainted with the tool of choice for amateur plumbers everywhere – the plunger.

Silver Hawk Mascot, "Swoop," Waves a Plunger in Salute to Plumbers Everywhere

For Marketing Director Amy Hill and her staff, the ode to plumbers is just another promotion in a string of creative gems that are bringing fans out to the Cove.

Earlier in the season, the Silver Hawks generated buzz with memorable themes like “Ugly Sweater Night” (fans wearing ugly sweaters received free admission), “Halfway to Halloween Night” (fans wearing Halloween costumes received free admission), and the recession-themed “Name Your Ticket Price Night” (no costume or sweater necessary, just name your price, man).

And people are still talking about one of last year’s Silver Hawk promotional masterpieces, “Mustache Awareness Night,” an event inspired by pitcher Josh Collmenter’s circa-1970 pushbroom stache’ that garnered an endorsement from the esteemed American Mustache Institute.

“A good promotion is one that is fun and that fans are going to be able to interact with,” Hill explains, which in turn, explains why on any given night fans at the Cove are likely to be found participating in off-the wall stunts like tossing rings at a plunger, dancing atop the dugout in a ridiculous sweater, or wearing a fake mustache.

Swoop Celebrates with the Winners of the "Big Underwear" Race

So, what’s next in South Bend? Having had a Plumber Appreciation night and a Mustache Awareness Night, one can only think that it will be a matter of time before the Silver Hawks combine the two and honor the most famous Mustachioed Plumber of all time: Mario.

Regardless of what Hill and company dream up next, Silver Hawk fans can be sure of one thing: it will be fun.

Swoop Leads the South Bend Diamond Girls in a Toilet Paper Race

Related posts:

1. Lessons from the Bush Leagues: Applying the Minor League Mindset to High School Athletics (Part II)
2. Drying Paint and Growing Grass Highlight Altoona’s Seventh Annual Homage to Awful
3. Lessons from the Bush Leagues: Applying the Minor League Mindset to High School Athletics (Part I)

The phrase was officially retired from the public lexicon by drug czar Gil Kerlikowske during a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Kerlikowske, the former Police Chief of Seattle and current head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, blamed the “war on drugs” mentality for impeding the country’s progress in dealing with illegal drugs. “Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” Kerlikowske said.

The Government’s semantic shift is part of a new vision for U.S. drug policy – a vision that emphasizes rehabilitating drug users instead of imprisoning them.

Although Kerlikowske and the Obama Administration may have a vision of what 21^st century drug policy should look like, they now lack a catch phrase for Americans to rally around. With “fight,” “war,” “battle,” “struggle,” “throw-down,” and “confrontation” all officially out as possible ways to describe America’s anti-drug efforts, the country may find itself unable to simply name the problem, much less solve it.

So, now, the Government not only has a drug problem, it also has a marketing problem.

And, who better to solve a marketing problem than corporate America?

Amazon - free super-saver shipping for a super drug-free America.

For years, corporations have successfully convinced unsuspecting Americans to purchase items they don’t need with money they don’t have. Alcohol and tobacco companies even have experience trying to convince the public not to use their products.

This marketing know-how could just as easily be used to rebrand our nation’s drug efforts.

Imagine – a Drug Free America, Delivered by UPS or how about Wal-Mart’s “Always Low Prices, Never High Associates.”

If corporate America joined the Government’s nameless anti-drug effort, we might see Taco Bell urging people to “Think Outside the Bong.” We may even see Verizon Wireless boasting that they have the nation’s biggest drug-free network. Can you “say no” now?

By enlisting America’s finest businesses to shape the public perception of America’s biggest problem, the Obama administration may be able to keep the next 40 years of drug policy from looking like the 40 years that preceded it.

Related posts:

1. IRS Joins FDA in Cereal Crackdown
2. US Auto Industry Makes U-Turn, Embraces Fuel Efficiency Standards
3. Why Manny Cheated

On Friday, KFC issued an apology and a raincheck to angry “customers” who were turned away during a recent promotion for the chain’s new Kentucky Grilled Chicken.

The promotion, designed to be the centerpiece of the Grilled Chicken product launch, was fairly straight forward: place a coupon offering a free two-piece grilled chicken meal on the KFC website, have Oprah mention the coupon on her show, serve up some free chicken, and then sit back and watch America fall in love with the new offering.

Unfortunately for Colonel Sanders and his crew, somewhere between plan and execution things got clucked up.

To understand what went wrong for KFC, it helps to compare their debacle to a recent restaurant giveaway that was executed successfully.

Not since the Chicken Famine of 1987 has poultry caused this much of a stir. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

In January, Denny’s surprised the breakfast world (which is not an easy group to surprise, given their penchant for early mornings and coffee) when it offered the entire country a free Grand Slam breakfast. The promotion, which was advertised during the Super Bowl, packed Denny’s restaurants across the country on the morning of February 3^rd. But, unlike the KFC freebie, the masses went home from Denny’s satisfied, and the breakfast chain enjoyed a flood of good publicity.

A closer look reveals three key ways in which the KFC promotion came up short.

Underpromise, Overdeliver

In offering the internet masses free chicken, KFC backed itself into a promise they were unable to deliver on.  By being unprepared for the amount of people who flooded their stores, KFC overpromised and underdelivered. In a business climate where one unhappy customer can vent their frustrations to millions of other potential customers with the click of a mouse, businesses can not afford to make promises they cannot keep.  Although KFC never anticipated that everyone would attempt to redeem their coupons at once (the original promotion was set to run over the course of multiple days), someone should have had the foresight to do some “what-if” planning.

Avoid the Coupon Mentality

Although coupons are not cash, they do share similarities: each is scarce, both are printed on paper, and both require effort to obtain. When KFC forced customers to get a coupon in order take part in the promotion, they inadvertently turned the act of giving away chicken into a monetary transaction. As a result, KFC did not just turn people away by refusing to honor the coupons; they essentially told the holders “your money is no good here.” The sense of entitlement that comes with holding a coupon led to a lot of strong negative reactions when the coupons went unfulfilled. As such, KFC may have been better served to forgo the coupons all together.

Own the Story

With a television show that draws over 7,000,000 viewers every weekday, Oprah has the ability to reach a captive mass audience. She also has the ability to draw a seemingly equal amount of people that enjoy lampooning anything she is involved in that doesn’t turn out as planned. While the power of “O,” initially helped spread the word on the chicken promotion, it also took ownership of the story from KFC. Instead of being a “KFC” story, the promotion became an “Oprah” story. This shift made it much harder for KFC to conduct damage control after the giveaway was botched.

The fact that KFC wasn’t telling a particularly good story to begin with did not help matters either. After Denny’s made good on their promise of a free breakfast for all, multiple blogs and newspapers praised the promotion as an altruistic act to help raise spirits during a down economy. Of course it wasn’t, but since Denny’s was in control of their publicity situation, they received this type of spin. KFC’s giveaway was never portrayed as anything more than a launch of a new product.

Next Time

Like all controversies that take on a life of their own on the internet, KFC’s mismanaged promotion will soon be an afterthought.

In the meantime, Colonel Sanders is urging his customers to UNthink KFC. As for the hungry patrons turned away during the chicken giveaway? They would like to see the Colonel’s team REthink their strategies before they try to roll out another promotion involving free food.

Related posts:

1. Wal-Mart’s Great Value Gamble
2. Free (Business) Lesson Plans! No Purchase Necessary!
3. Lessons from the Bush Leagues: Applying the Minor League Mindset to High School Athletics (Part II)

For example, it is best for me not to think about why I bought a new $18,000 automobile without so much as kicking the tires, yet every time I go to the grocery store and buy eggs I go through painstaking lengths to inspect every egg in the carton before parting with my $.99.

It is also best for me not to think about why my dog, a 2-year old Yellow Labrador, refuses to eat or drink anything unless he is inside of the house.

Lenny may be cute, be he refuses to dine al fresco

The reason I do not need to think about these things is because they defy logic. Trying to make sense of them would be a waste of time.

I have recently found that there is something else that makes no sense to me: television commercials. Recently, my Marketing Management professor at Ball State, Dr. Scott Inks, suggested that the class start watching television commercials with a critical eye in order to pick up on what the advertisers are trying to accomplish.

Since then I have gone from watching commercials like most people do (by flipping through the channels aimlessly until my program comes back on), to trying to perform a rudimentary psychological analysis on every commercial I see.

All I have learned is that most commercials do not lend themselves to in-depth analysis. They are meant to be glossed over. Sometimes dwelling on a commercial complicates matters to the point that the commercial ceases to make any sense. There are two popular, seemingly straightforward, advertisements that definitely fall into that category.

The first is the new Chef Boyardee commercial depicting a father and son sitting at the kitchen table. The son is enjoying a bowl of Chef Boyardee when the father notices the can, which reads “now contains a full serving of vegetables.” The father is amazed that canned ravioli can boast that amount of veggie-goodness. Unfortunately, every time he attempts to share his amazement, his wife cuts him off by running the garbage disposal or banging on pots. It’s a cute, but obvious, message – the mother is concerned that if her son realizes there are vegetables in Chef Boyardee, he will no longer want to eat his ravioli.

A few months ago, I would have seen that commercial and had a chuckle. Now, when I see it, I get confused. The kid in the commercial has to be at least 10 years old. The can of Chef Boyardee is sitting right in front of him. Can he not read? What’s the big secret?

Another commercial I struggle with, perhaps because it is geared toward a target market that is half my age, is Sony’s new “Los Angeles Plays PSP” commercial. The star of the commercial is a set of hands holding Sony’s portable gaming device. The spot shows the hands playing the PSP in the back seat of a car while life zooms by in fast-motion. Friends jump in and out of the car. Day turns to night as the vehicle zips along LA streets. The only constant is the anonymous pair of hands and their unwavering focus on the PSP.

The tag at the end, “everywhere just got better,” suggests that the portable nature of the device can turn any dull moment away from home into a fun-filled gaming utopia. But, is LA really that dull? The scenes depicted around the gaming device certainly looked more interesting to me than what was happening on the PSP’s small screen. It is almost as if the Sony commercial is saying, “Get your hands on a PSP! Take it everywhere and let life pass you by!”

Are there any commercials that fail to register with your logical mind? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Related posts:

1. US Auto Industry Makes U-Turn, Embraces Fuel Efficiency Standards
2. The World Needs an Accounting Sitcom
3. KFC and the Danger of Free: Why the Great Chicken Giveaway of 2009 Wasn’t so Great