Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Did you know Popeye endorsed more than just good old Spinach?

Brian looks back at an old commercial of Popeye promoting Wheatena cereal.

Transcription

Popeye and your business.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J Pombo Live.

What does Popeye the sailor man have to do with your business, let’s talk about it a little bit, shall we?

Popeye, what’s he known for, right?

He’s known for being strong to the finish because he eats his spinach. And so his spinach gives him superpowers that allow him to beat up Bluto or whatever bad guy he’s up against.

And in a sense, it became a quasi endorsement of spinach even though it was somewhat accidental, and started out in the comic strip.

What’s funny is that you look at a little bit of the history of Popeye and I just know a little bit of this weird stuff from other fascinations that I have that I fell into this. And the reason why I’m bringing this up is we were watching Popeye on HBO max with the kids, the old black and white ones, which are fabulous to watch.

But regardless, it reminded me of a lot of this background story and that he didn’t start out eating spinach. He actually started out every time he would rub the head of the wiffle hen, which was another character in the comic strip that Popeye started on which was called thimble theatre.

He would give him extreme luck, and that luck ended up becoming more of strength over time. But that’s where the concept came from.

Then from there, he would eat spinach once in a while. And they showed that and then they grab that when they started doing cartoons, because Popeye starred in the comic strips, and then he went to the cartoons.

So they started doing that in the cartoons where he would eat spinach. And that would give him his power. And that would allow him and that became the theme in every flippin cartoon every once in a while you see one where they weirdly, don’t have it in there. But most, you know, nine times out of 1090, probably 99 times out of 100. Popeye, or sometimes another character will eat spinach and win the day because of that special tie-in.

Now, the fact that this was almost like an endorsement deal was not lost on marketers of the day. And so what they did was they had a radio show that was sponsored by with Wheatena.

Wheatena is a breakfast cereal. You don’t see it as much around anymore, at least not not not where I live. But I think the brand is still out there. And what it is it’s kind of a whole wheat Cream of Wheat style. Or Farina or Molt-o Meal style thing.

So it’s um, it’s whole wheat in it, it’s got a lot of extra stuff in it. It’s a little different, a little more hearty than your typical Farina cereal, and they had a radio show.

And it was Popeye, it was Popeye on the radio. And I don’t even think, they had the same people who did the voices and everything but they did the show. They had to change the song because instead of eating spinach, he would eat Wheatena Cereal.

Wheatena is his diet. He asks you to try it with Popeye the sailorman.

And so it’s a really funny thing.

So throughout time, Popeye hasn’t only eaten spinach, but the same theme came through every time is he get into trouble he’s is a good guy who get into a situation he couldn’t get out of getting into trouble. Usually, the bad guy was was either picking on or grabbing all of Oilve and taking her against her will most of the time against her well.

And that was a bad situation going on that Popeye could not get through on his own. All of a sudden comes the spin edge, the Wheatena, whatever product would come out.

He would use that and get to the next level. It gave him the strength to win the day in the end so that he would be on top at the end of the show. This is the story arc of everybody that is your customer, your potential customer. It’s the story that has to be told whether you have a celebrity endorsement or not.

You need to have that story being told you are the hero. Your people are the hero and that this is great and it’s that book and I don’t have it in front of me, but we’ll talk about it. We’ll talk about it later.

I’ve talked about it previously, where that one, one book in particular really goes through this, and we’ll talk about that later. But this concept is true throughout. If you look at any really good advertisement, it puts the customer or potential customer in the place of a hero and going on a bit of a hero’s journey.

And sometimes it can be as simple as the Popeye story. And sometimes it can be a little more in-depth. But the same thing is true. They get into a situation they can’t get out of and your product comes to aid them to be everything that they’re meant to be. So hopefully that makes sense to you.

That it’s a different way of looking at your advertising and you’re able to step back and say okay, are we really presenting that story?

Are we putting out a Popeye story of our own?

Go check it out. It’s worth taking a look at your advertising a little bit differently, your marketing and your messaging a little bit differently.

If you’d like more ideas on how to get that message out there and how to have it be outlasting and overcoming your competition.

Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

You can get a free digital copy at AmazonProofBook.com. That’s all I got for today.

Have a great night and Meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.