They Prefer Syrup

It not like us here at Drink Moxie to talk about things just because everyone else is talking about them. With that in mind, let's talk about the thing that everyone's talking about.



Yes it's a commercial (part of a larger campaign, actually, courtesy of the Corn Refiners Association and DDB-Chicago) for the sugar that erudite America loves to hate, high fructose corn syrup. And yes, it has raised a few OMGs and perhaps a WTF or two in the interspheres. What I'm interested in is not why they would put out such a campaign, but why people would be so alarmed about it.

How different is this from what we're used to seeing? Certainly we all know "Got Milk" and "Pork: The Other White Meat" (both thanks to Bozell Worldwide), among the more notable food commodity campaigns. From a public image perspective, you could say that these two things had something going for them that the newer campaign doesn't - they are recognized as actual foods. High fructose corn syrup, to most people, is an ingredient. It doesn't come from a farm, it comes from a process involving enzymes and other chemicals (milk and pork are also processed, of course, but aren't thought of as such). This seems to be part of the point of the "SweetSurprise" campaign, with imagery that puts the "C" back in "HFCS" (see www.sweetsurprise.com, if you dare). This begs the question, though, how stellar is the image of corn at this point, that any product would want to be more closely associated with it?

The crux of this campaign is the health issue, but this is not necessarily unique, either. The "Other White Meat" campaign came in response to a growing public apprehension about the health impacts of red meat (we should note, however, that beef is still what's for dinner) and a few latent concerns about trichinosis. But the Pork Board had a more subtle approach, while the Corn Refiners are more aggressively combating the health concerns. In doing so, they've thrown a spotlight right on those concerns, which might be a bit risky. When Joe Public hears "fine in moderation" or reads on a website, "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted high fructose corn syrup 'Generally Recognized as Safe' status for use in food, and reaffirmed that ruling in 1996 after thorough review," it might be taken as less than reassuring.

Following my typical practice of comparing everything to Mad Men (I promise not to do this every time), this could be looked at through the lens of the pilot episode in which Sterling-Cooper is faced with the challenge of promoting Lucky Strike after the nation had awoken to the dangers of smoking. Don Draper's solution, of course, was not to fight the health concerns but to ignore them and focus on the image of the brand - to make smoking look cool, not healthy. Taking a look at this, I'd have to guess that DDB doesn't have a Don Draper:



Maybe the Presidential candidates will learn something from this. Does the strategy of complaining about misinformation and mistreatment by "the media" (or, more nebulously, by "what they say") really resonate with the buying public? Or does it just look like whining? Or even worse, might it backfire, making the Corn Refiners look like they're being a little too defensive, and that maybe there is something to these concerns about HFCS's role in obesity epidemics and diabetes?

If this were a political campaign, you might think that the people this campaign is really for are the people in the corn industry, who can take some pride in seeing these commercials and thinking that not everyone in America is against them. Considering the number of people who are involved, directly or indirectly, in the corn industry, maybe that's enough.