Monday, December 5, 2011

Potato Chip Study That You're Free to Take with a Grain of Salt


Stanford study: The humble potato chip and packaging language target class distinctions. (San Jose Mercury-News, 12/5/2011)

Excerpt:    Potato chips are an ideal food for analyzing classes' differences in marketing because everyone eats them, no matter what their social class -- unlike beef jerky sticks and pork rinds, for instance, or imported caviar and Champagne.

And chips come wrapped in bags covered with cultural clues
.

According to Stanford University Professor of Linguistics Dan Jurafsky, "The red-state and blue-state models of our nation are written on the back of every bag of potato chips."

Red-state chips: Hawaiian, Herr's, Lays, Tim's, Utz and...

Wise is a regional brand, which was popular in the Nelson household in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

So let's put the red-state/blue-state theory to the test.

Mom and Dad were lifelong Republicans.  (Well, almost, as you'll see below.)   In a mock election in Mrs. Johnson's 5th grade class at Jefferson Elementary School in late October 1960, I cast a vote for Richard Nixon, as did most of my classmates.

Bingo!  We got a confirmation, folks.

But now that I'm older and Wise-less, living outside the potato chip's distribution area, I'm a blue-state potato chip fan.  (Even Mom voted for an occasional Democrat in her later years -- and for Barack Obama with great enthusiasm in 2008.  Credit Sarah Plain with an assist on that one.)

Stanford's blue-state chip selections include Boulder, Dirty, Popchips, Terra, Season's, and

A big favorite in the decidedly blue Nelson/Richard household.

So there you have it; the proof's in the pudding.

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