What Does Digital Marketing Have to Do With Popcorn?
A little history lesson about the marketing power of popcorn.
Unless you’re marketing a movie theater and using the fresh buttery aroma to attract movie-goers, popcorn has little to do with digital marketing services, right? Wrong. The concept of popcorn in a movie theater has EVERYTHING to do with marketing.
Initially, popcorn was selected as the snack of choice for movie-goers during the great depression purely because it was an inexpensive treat that also allowed theater owners to increase profits. During World War II, sugar rationing precluded theaters from having candy, rocketing the popped snack to movie theater stardom.
Over time, popcorn became synonymous with watching movies, and not just in the theater, the popularity of home popcorn brands such as Jiffy Pop let people conveniently pop their corn on a stovetop, followed by electric hot air popping machines which began appearing on yellow and green kitchen counters in the 1970s, and eventually it all gave rise to the modern microwave popcorn we enjoy today.
So where’s the marketing?
Marketing comes from the association of popcorn and family entertainment. Popcorn commercials almost always feature two things, the family watching TV and the visual of the buttery golden goodness, but the bowl of corn is always right under your nose, why? The smell creates an association of freshly popped kernels that don’t just create hunger pangs. Your nose sends signals to your brain, synapses are fired creating a desire to see a movie and enjoy some delicious, buttered popcorn – pretty strong marketing, at least for the popcorn and movie industries.
The Physics of Marketing
How does popcorn align with marketing? Marketing gold lies in the popping process, and how it relates to the physics of marketing.
Popcorn kernels explode (or pop) from a combination of elements that can be related to marketing.
- Heat, between 400° and 460° Fahrenheit to be exact.
- Transformation of the water contained within the kernel, turning it to steam.
- Explosive momentum, specifically the bursting of the kernel’s hard shell.
- Consumption, of the thing you desire, the popped corn.
In order to transform the inert and unassuming (whatever you are marketing) into an explosion of delight to be enjoyed by those best suited to devour it, you combine heat and pressure to initiate expansion, creating a bursting out of a shell, culminating in the revealing of the goodness within–sounds like marketing to me!
Maybe this article is less about what popcorn can teach us about marketing and more about how the popping of corn can remind us to be better marketers. Perhaps we should have led with that?
Would you like to learn about the marketing power of a munchkin?