Greater Taters

Sat­ur­day after­noon. Approved list in hand, dad (me) is off to the gro­cery to get the fam­ily some food for the week. Fruit — check. Milk — check. Bread — check. Ooo — look at that!  The prod­uct that will make dad the hero of din­ner time to my wife and kids — Tater Tots shaped into let­ters. List be damned, into the cart the tater tots went.

Why did I feel com­pelled to buy let­ter shaped tater tots? Marketing!

I have two lit­tle ones who are fas­ci­nated with spelling. My 3 year old son in par­tic­u­lar loves let­ters. “Daddy, how you spell Google chrome?” is a com­mon utter­ance in the Bow­man house­hold. What par­ent does not want to encour­age their kids to be inter­ested in read­ing, spelling, and edu­ca­tion?  Not only do my kids love to spell, they are some­times hard to please when it comes to din­ner. Over­all they are pretty good eaters. Still, they are kids, so meal­time is fre­quently an adven­ture in din­ing. As a par­ent I will take any advan­tage I can get in an effort to get the kids into the clean plate club. Enter let­ter shaped tater tots into the equation.

Upon arrival at home, I qui­etly stashed the tots in the freezer. (the tater tots that is, not my chil­dren) When it was time for din­ner, I called the kids to the table and told them I had a big sur­prise. Along with the ham­burg­ers and fruit that was on their plate we were hav­ing some­thing else. I then opened the oven and revealed the crispy potato alpha­bet that was wait­ing to be devoured. They were excited beyond my expec­ta­tions. “Let­ters!” “We can eat the let­ters!” Danc­ing, yelling, spelling, and gen­eral may­hem then ensued. Totally worth the 3 bucks I spent on silly let­ter shaped pota­toes — which were actu­ally eaten too!

This prod­uct is an exam­ple of great mar­ket­ing. Mar­ket­ing as described by Seth Godin in his great book Free Prize Inside. Mar­ket­ing that had noth­ing to do with adver­tis­ing.   Mar­ket­ing that sold a prod­uct to some­one who was not pre­vi­ously aware of it or inter­ested in buy­ing it.   Mar­ket­ing that made two kids excited about eat­ing din­ner.  Mar­ket­ing that cre­ated a great expe­ri­ence for a dad. Mar­ket­ing that is now gen­er­at­ing pos­i­tive word of mouth for Ore-Ida… for free.  Mar­ket­ing that was as sim­ple as pota­toes and the alphabet.

I could have bought un-brand tater-tots at a lower price.  I could have bought the bet­ter tast­ing “crispy crowns” for the same price.  I could have ignored them all-together and just stuck to my list. How­ever, Ore-Ida was smart enough to know that mom’s and dads some­times buy things for other rea­sons — expe­ri­ences, sur­prises, edu­ca­tion, & the off chance of a suc­cess­ful meal.    Because of this under­stand­ing, they cre­ated a remark­able prod­uct, made the sale, and got me talk­ing about, of all things,  tater tots.

What can you do to make your prod­uct or ser­vice appeal­ing to peo­ple in a dif­fer­ent way?