Re: HUMOUR: interesting tidbits from the marketing world

On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

>On Thu, Sep 28, 2000 at 07:38:00PM -0400, Jonathan Chang wrote:
>[snip]
>> 6. When Gerber first started selling baby food in Africa,
>> they used the same packaging as in the USA - the cute baby
>> on the label. Later, when investigating lower than expected
>> sales figures, they found out that it is common practice in
>> Africa to put pictures of the contents on food package
>> labels.
>[snip]
>
>Eek! Imagine the shock value for an African mom to walk into a store with
>food packages containing pictures of what's inside, and then she comes
>across a shelf with baby pictures on them....
>
>Interesting how different cultures have different ways and conventions to
>depict things. Must keep that in mind when I develop my conculture :-P
>
Some food for thought:

I don't really understand the problem. It _is_ a fairly common
practice to put a picture of the contents on the can. Here in the US
as well. Kellogg's Corn Flakes have corn flakes; Libby's Fruit
Cocktail has fruits; Weis's Natural Tomatoes has tomatoes; Spam has
Spam; Richfood carrots has carrots; Weis mixed veg. has various cut
vegetables; Weis grape jelly has grapes. It's never even _occurred_ to
me or any one else I've ever come in contact with that Gerber's would
contain 100% strained baby.

There's probably a better reason for these low sales in Africa.
Perhaps a market study would have been in order? How long do they
breast feed? (Some cultures breast feed for 2 or 3 years.) Do they
make special food for toddlers at home regardless of what's
commercially available? Would they feed special goop to their babies
if it were available? Sounds more like someone didn't do their job
right!

Padraic.

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>T
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