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Hello friends, I’m currently developing our sponsorship and advertising program (you’ll hear more about this very soon) and started thinking about advertising in the 80s and 90s. Advertising was so pervasive and engrained in American culture. I can still recite jingles and taglines from some television commercials. Advertising was everywhere! I think, even with all of the digital technology today, it must be increasingly more difficult for advertisers to get a message out these days. Anyhoo, I ran into an interesting story somehow about a company called Viskase Corp, which still exists as a food packaging solutions provider. In 1990, this company developed and launched an edible ink that hot dog manufactures could use to print messages on the hot dogs. They thought this would be the next big thing in advertising. I can picture it in my head now: A sales executive and food engineer fly from Chicago to New York and have a series of meetings with advertising people on Madison Avenue about the fact that the technology to print on hot dogs now exist and the world of advertising has changed forever. Well, unsurprisingly, the idea tanked. Think about it. There’s probably only about a 30% chance that someone would put the hotdog in the bun by which the message would be visible. Even then, it wouldn’t be visible for long after being covered in mustard, relish, onions or other condiments. Still, it’s a fun story so I’m glad it happened. Who knows? Maybe, with all the digitalness around, printed messages on hot dogs might be the best way to get a message out in today’s world.
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