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Happy national popcorn day! While you're probably celebrating with a bowl of freshly popped and generously buttered popcorn, here's something different to digest: Orville Redenbacher originally called his product Red-Bow.
In 1951, Redenbacher and his partner, Charlie Bowman, one of Purdue's graduates, purchased the George F. Chester and Son Corn Seed Plant located in Boone Township, Indiana. . Although Redenbacher had a background in agronomy and plant genetics, he had tasted popcorn and had been friendly to the Chester family.
Finally, Carl Hartman was brought to experiment. In 1969, when the trio developed a seed in which they felt really confident, they went to the market. They nicknamed the product "Red-Bow", a nod to "Redenbacher" and "Bowman".
The product was a regional success, but in 1970, Bowman and Redenbacher were ready for a national audience and hired an advertising agency in Chicago to advise them on branding. At their first meeting, Redenbacher talked about popcorn for three hours. "Come back next week and we'll have something for you," he told him later.
The following week, he speaks to the agency and is told that "Orville Redenbacher's" is the perfect name for the new brand of popcorn. "Damn, no," he said. "Redenbacher is a name … so funny." That was the goal, they told him, and they had to make a compelling case because Orville Redenbacher is the brand we know today – and the man himself is always a well. Spokesperson known more than 20 years after his death.
Nevertheless, Redenbacher was not sure that the $ 13,000 requested by the agency was well spent. "I drove back to Indiana, thinking with irony that we had paid $ 13,000 so that someone could carry the same name as the one my mother had found when I was born," wrote Redenbacher later.
Want more of Redenbacher? Take a look at the inventor at work in vintage advertising below.
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