Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S7E08 - Kentucky Fried Brand Myths

Episode Date: February 23, 2018

This week, we debunk urban brand myths. Myths that live on as assumed facts in marketing textbooks, MBA courses, endless business seminars and dinner parties. It's easy to accept rumours as truth because they're usually dramatic and juicy. But many of the myths you’ve heard and maybe even passed along are actually...untrue.    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. We'll see you next time. new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 7, 2018. that's no joke you're not you

when you're hungry you're a good man with all things you're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly Her obituary in Rolling Stone magazine stated the following. A post-mortem showed she died as a result of choking on a ham sandwich while in bed. The world had lost Ellen Naomi Cohen. You knew her as Mama Cass.

Cass Elliott was invited to join the New Journeyman group by Denny Doherty in 1965. Leader John Phillips didn't want her in the group originally because her size didn't fit the image he had for the band. But Phillips couldn't deny her talent. When he agreed to let her join the band, which now consisted of John Phillips, wife Michelle Phillips and Denny Doherty, they needed a new name.

Watching a television show about the Hells Angels one night, a biker said they called their girlfriends mamas. Cass jumped up and said, That's it. I want to be a mama. Denny looked at John and said, And the papas? The mamas and the papas had a string of big hits in their brief time together from 1965 to 1968.

Mama Cass then embarked on a successful solo career. In 1974, a 32-year-old Cass was performing a two-week concert series at the London Palladium in England. After the final performance, she attended a party at Mick Jagger's house. She left early and went home to an apartment she was renting from singer Harry Nilsson. That night, Mama Cass died in her sleep. It was Monday, July 29, 1974. Years later, I was working with Denny Doherty. We were talking about Cass, and I said what a tragedy it was that Cass died choking on a sandwich.

Denny said, you know that's a myth it was that Cass died choking on a sandwich. Then he said, you know that's a myth, right? Cass died of heart failure. I didn't know that. Everything I'd ever read said she choked on a ham sandwich. But,

sure enough, before the autopsy had been carried out, a careless coroner had seen a sandwich beside her bed that morning and,

not seeing any other signs of trauma, made an erroneous assumption she had choked on it. Maybe that deduction lined up with assumptions about her eating habits or her weight. The story stuck. But it was incorrect. That initial coroner had missed one essential fact. The sandwich beside her bed was untouched. Cass Elliott had died of heart failure.

Legend has it that four years later, Who drummer Keith Moon died in the very same apartment at the very same age of 32. That is true. But what isn't true is the persistent myth that Mama Cass Elliott died choking on a ham sandwich. The world of marketing has its own set of persistent myths. They have been floating around for years.

These brand myths live on as assumed facts in countless marketing textbooks, MBA courses, and are repeated in endless business seminars and dinner parties. But many are untrue. They have been incredibly damaging to brands, they have fed conspiracy theories,

and some of them have even haunted the people associated with those products. But urban legends die hard. As someone once said, squashing a rumor is like trying to unring a bell. You're under the influence. Influence. Most brand myths and urban legends have incredible staying power. I'm sure most brands dearly wish their commercials were as memorable as rumors are. Some myths have become so entrenched in our culture that they are taught in universities

and are passed along as cautionary tales in certain industries. Like this one, that I heard often repeated in the advertising business. Brand Myth General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova into a Spanish-speaking country. Unbeknownst to GM, Nova translates to no-go and the car spectacularly failed. There have been many marketing lessons about big brands marching into foreign countries, not doing their homework, and failing. This is not one of them. The original Chevy Nova was launched in the U.S. market in

1962. Between 1972 and 1978, it was also sold in Mexico and several other Spanish-speaking countries, primarily Venezuela. Now, the phrase Nova in Spanish literally does mean

doesn't go. But nova and the word nova are distinctly different things in that language. It's like the difference between forbid and up forbid, or the difference between notable and no table. So if the Spanish saw the word nova, they wouldn't think nogo. They would think the same thing as English-speaking people. Nova roughly means bright star in both languages. General Motors was also well-established in Mexico and Venezuela in the 1970s. So when it launched cars there, the Spanish divisions would have handled the naming.

Unlike other companies who make a mistake when breaking into a country for the very first time. And here's the final pin in the myth. The Nova name didn't negatively affect car sales at all. It sold well in Spanish markets. As a matter of fact, Venezuelan sales actually surpassed GM's expectations. And there was a part two to this brand myth, that GM eventually changed the name of the Nova to the Carib,

and the car finally succeeded. Yes, the Carib did sell in Mexico, but it was a Volkswagen. Brand Myth Little Mikey of Life Cereal fame died from the explosive effects of mixing Pop Rocks candy with soda pop. So, what exactly are Pop Rocks? They're small pieces of hard candy that have been gasified with carbon dioxide under super atmospheric pressure.

When the sugar granules on the outer shell meet moisture, the gas is released, causing that crackly, fizzy sound we know so well. Before hitting the shelves in the mid-70s, Pop Rocks were extensively tested and found to be entirely safe for consumption. But despite the thumbs up from the FDA, wild stories about the perils of Pop Rocks began to spread among kids. And one rumor in particular really blew up. It surrounded the cute kid known as Little Mikey, who had achieved fame as the picky eater

in the famous Life cereal commercial from the 1970s. What's this stuff? Some cereal. It's supposed to be good for you. Do you try it? I'm not going to try it. You try it. I'm not going to try it. Let's get Mikey. Yeah. He won't eat it. He hates everything.

He likes it. Hey, Mikey. When you bring life home, don't tell the kids it's one of those nutritional cereals you've been trying to get them to eat. You're the only one who has to know. Rumor had it real-life Mikey died when his stomach exploded from an unexpected lethal combination of carbonated soda and Pop Rocks. No one knew little Mikey's real name. All we knew was that he disappeared from our television sets.

So General Foods began battling the Exploded Kid myth, which started a scant four years after the product was introduced. They took out full-page ads in 45 publications trying to quell the rumors and wrote 50,000 letters to school principals. They even sent the Pop Rocks inventor on the road to explain that the candy generated less gas than a half can of soda, inducing nothing more than a hearty, non-life-threatening belch. Then, in 1983, Pop Rocks production stopped.

Many saw it as proof that the candy was harmful and had to be pulled from the shelves. But it wasn't true. Pop Rocks had been bought by Kraft and were rebranded as Action Candy. It disappeared for a brief time because the candy had to be swapped in stores. But five years later, the original Pop Rocks name was restored and can still be found in stores today. So, what really happened to Little Mikey? Well, nothing.

In fact, his real name is John Gilchrist. He's now an advertising executive in New York, and no part of him has exploded. Here's what we know about Gilchrist. He still enjoys live cereal. He didn't get a lifetime supply, he wasn't a particularly picky eater as a kid, and no, he isn't dead. So why was he the subject of this brand myth, you ask? Well, it's hard to say. But often an urban legend needs a touch of somewhat credible realism to catch on, one that doesn't allow for easy verification.

Despite all General Foods' efforts and Mikey's continuous existence, the rumors still abound to this day. If you check the Pop Rock's Frequently Asked Questions page on their website, the Little Mikey rumor is still the very first thing addressed, even though the brand myth has been exploded. Brand myth. An old lady eating Kentucky Fried Chicken discovers she's actually chewing on a Kentucky Fried Rat. She has a heart attack and dies.

Her family sues KFC for millions. I remember hearing this one all the way back in the 60s when I was a kid. This rumor resurfaces every decade in a multitude of variations. One writer has collected 115 different versions

of the Kentucky Fried Rat urban legend. But that brand myth has inspired many hoaxes and dreams of big payoffs. In 2009, a plaintiff in Atlanta sued KFC, claiming he bit into a Kentucky Fried Mouse. KFC maintained it was a hoax, the case went to trial trial and KFC won the lawsuit. In 2015, a security guard in Wilmington, California posted a photo to Facebook of what he claimed was a Kentucky Fried Rat found

in his box of Kentucky Fried Chicken Tenders. He was going to hire a lawyer and seek damages. When KFC originally contacted the plaintiff, he refused to respond. When KFC asked he bring theiff, he refused to respond. When KFC asked he bring the offending piece to an independent lab for testing, the plaintiff initially refused.

Eventually, he did hand the deep-fried question mark over to the lab. According to that independent analysis, the deep-fried meat was indeed chicken. KFC demanded a public apology. It was later declared a hoax. In all our research, we couldn't find a single case where KFC had lost a lawsuit over this kind of claim. Nor could we find a case where a plaintiff was awarded millions by the courts. KFC obviously takes these allegations seriously.

A claim like this is incredibly damaging to its brand and reputation. And a brand myth has lasting implications. In a survey of people who had heard the story that someone had bitten into a deep-fried rat and won a big monetary settlement from KFC,

76% of those people said they believed it, proving that some rumors are just too tasty to ignore. And we'll be right back after this message. New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism.

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So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. If you're enjoying this episode, why not dip into our archives? Available wherever you download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list. Brand myth. Procter & Gamble's logo was a symbol of the company's support of Satanism. P&G's original logo was adopted in 1851. At that time, literacy was low, and companies were more often marked with visual trademarks than with words.

The black-and-white logo depicted a bearded man in the moon surrounded by 13 stars. The stars were an homage to the original 13 colonies of the USA. The moon was to reflect P&G's ability to touch the lives of its consumers throughout different phases of their days. P&G had a long run with this logo until the early 80s, when an urban myth was born. In the summer of 82 in California, someone began sending letters to thousands of Californians saying the imagery within P&G's logo was really a symbol of devil worship.

The letters claimed the man in the moon's curly beard contained an inverted 666, that the man had two devil horns, and 13 referred to Chapter 13 from the Book of Revelation addressing the mark of the beast. P&G's phones rang off the hook. The leaflets also said the president of P&G had appeared on TV saying the company's profits supported the Church of Satan. The statement was supposedly made on either the Phil Donahue show, 60 Minutes, or the Merv Griffin show. But no representative from the company had ever appeared on any of those programs.

P&G combed through years of transcripts from each show and found zero references to their company. Spokespeople from the networks even confirmed they had never had anyone from P&G on their programs. But it didn't matter. In 1985, P&G launched a campaign to counteract the rumors. It held a news conference to deny the stories and established a toll-free phone number to handle all the rumor-related calls.

It asked religious leaders to tell their followers that the rumors were untrue. The company also hired two investigative agencies to track the rumors and take legal action against those who spread them. Five lawsuits were filed against seven individuals, several being door-to-door salesmen selling competitive products

who had passed the stories along. Not long after, leaflets claiming P&G was a, quote, agent of Satan began surfacing in New York and Pennsylvania. P&G sued Amway after discovering that a Utah distributor had used the corporate Amway voicemail system to spread the Satan rumor. Amway countersued, claiming libel. It was a damage

control frenzy. In 1995, P&G dropped the Man on the Moon logo altogether in favor of simple blue P&G lettering. But the Amway lawsuits continued well into the 2000s. Four years after a federal court judge asked P&G and Amway to stop suing each other, P&G was awarded nearly $20 million in a civil suit. Amway maintains it acted quickly to quash the rumors. But you can't stop an urban legend, not even in a court of law. Despite the fact P&G is a public company

and its profit distribution is a matter of public record, people still insisted it had a monetary affiliation with the Church of Satan. P&G says it doesn't have the slightest idea how the rumor got started.

All it knows is that after all the proof to the contrary, people still believed it. Because a brand myth can be a sly devil. Brand Myth The design on an Oreo cookie is a secret symbol of the medieval Knights Templar and the Freemasons. Got any Oreo cookies in the house? Go get one. We'll wait here.

Take a look at the design stamped on it. There are 90 evenly spaced ridges on the rim. A ring of dots and dashes encircles a series of what could be described as crosses or four-leaf flowers. The Oreo name has an arrow above and below it, as well as what looks like an antenna sitting atop a circle. This is one very intricately designed cookie. The brand myths surrounding the Oreo design suggest these symbols secretly communicate a hidden message. It implies the flower's symbology of the Oreo was linked to the cross pati used by the medieval Knights Templar,

and the dots and dashes on the cookie represent the three degrees of ancient craft Freemasonry, two organizations often accused of grand-scale conspiracies. It was said the cookie design was a means of covert communications between members of the Illuminati, and above all, the design was a way of tricking untold millions of people to participate in an unholy communion against their will every time they ate one. Furthermore, conspirators pointed to the fact Oreo is the largest-selling packaged cookie in the world, with more than 40 billion consumed every year, which was proof the cookie wasn't just the most popular cookie in the world,

but the most powerful cookie in the world. There is no doubt symbols are potent in society and can influence our subconscious. But the history of the Oreo design is simpler than that. There have been three patterns on the Oreo since the first one in 1912. That first one had a wreath-like design that circled the Oreo name.

The second redesign in 1924 added two sets of turtle doves to a more ornate wreath circling the Oreo name, with an outer ring of dots. The third redesign was apparently created in 1952 by a longtime Nabisco engineer named William Tournier. His son, Bill, says that while his grandfather was a Freemason, his father was not,

and that his dad had absolutely zero interest in Freemasonry. Bill Tournier still has a framed blueprint of his father's sketch hanging in his home. It says,

drawn by W.A. Tournier on July 17, 1952. The only other marks on the document are the initials of a manager approving the design. William Tournier died in 2004. Son Bill says that when people asked his father why the design has 90 ridges or why it has four-leafed flowers on it, he would just shrug his shoulders. No rhyme, no reason. Just a geometric pattern from an engineer

who liked industrial design. There is no evidence at all that the Oreo is anything more than an evolution of a 106-year-old design created to sell cookies. If there is a mind-mill going on, it's this. 50% of Oreo eaters pull their cookies apart before eating them, then twist, lick, and dunk. If you're looking for flexible workouts,

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Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Our final myth today. The reason a loon appears on the Canadian one dollar coin is because the originalageur design was lost by a courier company. Guess what? This urban legend is true. Let's go back in time. Canada had a silver dollar coin since 1935 featuring two men in a fur-laden canoe. It was a depiction of the early voyageurs. The problem with that coin was that it was relatively large and heavy,

due to its silver content. It was also unpopular because it too closely resembled the 25-cent coin in weight and color. So Canadians preferred to use $1 bills instead. The problem with paper bills is that they wear out every couple of years. So, Canadians preferred to use $1 bills instead. The problem with paper bills is that they wear out every couple of years. So, in 1987, the government decided to phase out the banknotes and issue a gold $1 coin. The coins would last a couple of decades and save millions in printing costs. And here's where something really strange happened.

The master dyes of the Voyageur design were sent by courier to the Mint in Winnipeg, but they never arrived and were never seen again. According to an investigation by the Royal Canadian Mint, the dyes had been entrusted to a courier service on November 3rd, 1986. No one asked the courier guy for identification when he came to pick them up. Apparently, sending the dyes via a courier was a major breach of security procedures.

They would normally be sent via a high-security firm like Brinks. And both dyes, for both sides of the coin, were bundled together. That, too, for both sides of the coin, were bundled together. That, too, was a breach of procedure, as it was standard policy to ship each die separately. Meaning, whoever now had the dies could strike both sides and manufacture untold numbers of counterfeit coins.

A parliamentary investigation showed that the Mint had simply hired a local courier instead of Brinks in order to save $43.50. When the dyes went missing, a quick decision was made. The Mint had an alternate design featuring a

loon, created by Robert Ralph Carmichael. The government gave it a fast approval and the loon dyes were immediately cut. and the loon dies were immediately cut. 80 million loon coins were put into circulation on June 30, 1987, in order to foil counterfeiters, meeting the schedule for the original Voyager coin launch.

It's no myth. That's the loony story about why we have a loony to this day. It's said a lie can go halfway around the world before the truth puts its pants on. Urban legends and brand myths are powerful examples of that. It's easy to accept rumors as truth, because they're usually dramatic and juicy, even though there are so few verifiable facts underpinning them. Procter & Gamble truly does have world domination in its industry. It is a behemoth. So, it would be easy to believe that level of supremacy might have an evil subtext. How does one single cookie

get eaten 40 billion times a year? Could something be influencing those unprecedented purchases? And might there be a deep-fried surprise lurking in the bottom of our bucket? All those myths have been dispelled, but people still believe. Because it takes time to excavate the truth.

Time most people aren't willing to spend. In this day and age, the acceleration of a rumor has jumped to warp speed, Mr. Sulu. Back in the day, someone had to send disparaging letters out about P&G one at a time. Today, the internet can send a meme out to millions with one click. And in this current political era, we see firsthand that if you repeat an untruth often enough, people will begin to believe it. We'd all like to think we have an unerring instinct for the truth.

But while we demand the facts, we often relish the rumor. When you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. Under the Influence was recorded in the Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Keith Ullman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Research, Abby Forsythe.

Co-writer, Sydney O'Reilly. Follow me on Twitter at Terry O'Influence for some fun content. See you next week. This episode brought to you by an urban legend. It's finger licking good. By the way, feel free to peruse

the Under the Influence shop. We've got some fun t-shirts that will fit you to a tee. Go to terryoreilly.ca slash shop. Every purchase supports the show and we appreciate it. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old

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today at Felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.

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