A REALLY bad branding example

Spam. We all know about the web version of what it is and what it means. Then there is the original Spam. Salty, strange, totally unhealthy and just kind of spooky in it’s own rights. Originally known as “Spiced Ham”, but shortened down to the one word we know best. So why the hell am I writing about this stuff?

My wife and I have been helping clean her grandmothers house who recently passed away and it’s like going into a time warp of products and publications of the past. Some of the things we have found so far;

• Neosporin Powder from the 1970’s
• Nickel Ad papers from the 1980’s
• Dictionaries from the 1960’s

But the best thing we found so far is this little gem;

You read this correctly; Potted Meat Food Product. At first I wondered if this is what regular meat gets fed since it’s apparently “Meat Food”. Turns out that this is a competitor to Spam, but clearly with a horrible name. And that got me thinking about the real importance of branding and what happens when you’re branding an imitation.

Get Your Selling Points Figured Out

The label of this product tells me nothing I want to know about this fine food product. Maybe the ingredients will help me to make the decision to purchase;

Ingredients: Mechanically separated chicken, pork skin, partially defatted cooked pork tissue, partially defatted cooked beef fatty tissue, vinegar, less than 2% of salt, spices, sugar, flavorings, sodium erythorbate and sodium nitrate.

Yum! I love partially defatted cooked pork tissue! See what I’m saying here people? If you’re having to compete with an established product, then think creatively about how to separate yourself from just being “the other guy” or in this case totally freaking disgusting.

We’re All Copycats

Whatever you do for a living or whatever your employer does probably isn’t anything new to the business world. It’s all about the first impressions and presentation, and in this case, these guys have totally bombed both. First impression is “oh my god, wtf is this!?” and the presentation was an intro to a self-induced vomit session thanks to the ingredients. So we all have to do better than that when we’re public facing.

The Point

Rushing to the gate with a poorly construed imitation hoping to cash in on the current “hot thing” is a HORRIBLE idea for the long term, but probably more profitable in the short term. To me, it just makes more sense to carefully weigh your presentation against bad examples vs. good examples and learn your angles there. Haste makes waste… and mechanically separated chicken.

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