I was enjoying my lunch in economy class when it occured to me that it was awfully nice of the airline to include that little packet of pepper that they give you. Even in economy class — to go to all of that trouble…
Then I started to wonder: Was it nice? Or was it eerie?
Why would the airline go out of their way to include pepper?
Why don’t they include any other spices? Salt, yes, but pepper is more exotic, more expensive, less neccessary.
How did pepper manage to wrangle a place on every tray of every airline?
Furthermore, how did pepper get on every table in every restaurant? Even McDonald’s?
Why were people offering to grind it on everything you order?
What was its link to salt?
This kind of wild marketing success doesn’t happen by accident.
What the hell was going on here?
Why was pepper being given away all over the place all the time for free? Was some guerilla marketing campaign being waged, cloaked in secrecy for years?
Who, or what, was behind all of this pepper?
I decided to get to the bottom of it.
I’d heard of the National Dairy Council, the California Cheese Board, the Beef Council. There had to be a National Pepper Council.
There was no listing for a Pepper Council or a Pepper Board. Nothing with pepper.
I tried the American Association of Advertisers and they told me they had no such client.
My internet search yielded a number of Dr. Pepper sites, a ‘Malaysian TradeCouncil,’ and a wide variety of trade associations, the most interesting of which were the Ginseng Board in Wisconsin and the American Association of Beekeepers.
I figured that the Ginseng Board would be the cool people, and indeed they were.
The gal who answered the phone said she thought there was a Pepper Council but she couldn’t remember where. She asked around in the office. They couldn’t find the Pepper Board, but suggested that I call Morton’s in New Jersey. I told her I thought that Morton’s only sold salt.
“Where have you been?” she said.
Her point taken, I contacted Morton’s. They didn’t get back to me.
I called the beekeepers.
The beekeepers suggested that I call the American Spice Trade Association, which I did. The receptionist there seemed intriguied by my questions and put me in touch with their public relations agency.
As per their request, I faxed them my questions.
composed a list of questions. It turned out that I had many.
To wit:
How did pepper get itself linked with salt?
How did salt get top billing (i.e. S&P)? Is there any sort of movement to change the order?
Of all condiments, only salt and pepper are able to transcend culinary class boundaries. Why can’t other spices seem to break the stranglehold position pepper seems to have on tabletops?
Who’s responsible for the ingenius ‘freshly ground pepper’ craze? How did that come about? Did a sales force sell the idea through restaurants?
What kind of leap in sales did pepper see from that movement?
Do children use pepper? How do you inspire early trial?
How did you get those tiny packets of pepper to be included in airline meals and McDonald’s meals?
What kind of mark-up/profit margin do you make on those tiny packets?
Who coined the phrase ‘dash’? How do you think this zesty-sounding terminology affects the way people cook with pepper?
What does having a little packet of pepper add to simple fare like a Whopper?
How much money does McDonald’s spend in the U.S. in a year on pepper? How about United Airlines?
Is the idea behind including pepper more to further the notion of pepper being an essential part of any meal: a loss leader, rather than there for pure profit?
Collectible salt and pepper shakers: was that the most ingenius trick that the salt and pepper industries ever dreamed up or what?
How about the term “peppery?” How did you get honored with your own adjective?
Did cinnamon unsuccessfully try to ape you with the awkward, not-really-a-word,commercial-sounding “cinnamonny”?
Have you experimented with tag lines or slogans for pepper? What have some of them been?
There is no brand name pepper that springs to mind. (ie Morton’s salt, Lawry’s seasoned salt) Was that a conscious marketing decision- to keep pepper ‘raw’ or ‘au natural?’
Did A&P and S&H copy S&P? Could the S&P 500 be a branding opportunity for the pepper/salt consortium?
Is there a pepper/salt, (or a salt/pepper) consortium? Who’s the boss?
Are people addicted to pepper? What’s the difference with getting people to develop a taste for something and developing an addiction?
Are you trying to make people addicted to pepper?
Anita called me right back. She was pleasant but elusive. She told me there were lots of questions she couldn’t answer.
She did have some interesting information.
She told me that pepper is the largest selling spice by volume. And the fourth largest selling seasoning (after dehydrated onion, mustard seeds and sesame seeds). She reminded me, though, that when you use pepper, you don’t use much so, while the volume of pepper used may be lower, it’s an extremely popular spice.
She had an interesting take on the airplane question. She saw tiny pepper and salt packets as a step down from shakers, rather than a step up from nothing. She claimed that salt and pepper had followed sugar’s lead, shaker-wise.
“I think everyone loves salt and pepper,” she said.
Anita pointed out that the “category” is hard to grow by making people want to douse their food with pepper (although pepper-crusted steak or fish is a great example of this technique.) Instead, she said, the pepper industry must continually invent new ways to use pepper. Using it as a rub, in a marinade, using it in untraditional dishes, like ice cream.
“It’s great with sorbet!” she enthused.
Within restaurants, she admitted, she tries to make cooks find more reasons to use pepper, and to incorporate pepper into manufactured foods. Clever.
She also hawks suggestions to health magazines that if people were cutting back on salt they should add pepper.
I asked if there was any hostility or rivalry between the salt and pepper industries and she said, “We do our thing and they do theirs.”
She gave credit to pepper for adding flavor. A Whopper, she said, was “pretty bland”without pepper.
Which raised another question: Does a restaurant’s inclusion of pepper imply that the food lacks taste?
When I investigated further, it seems like a losing proposition for restaurants to put pepper on the table at all: it curbs the appetite, it costs them money…
Is pepper on the table a lingering nicety that has out-stayed its financial practicality?
Or is it the greatest goddamn underground marketing campaign this world’s ever seen?
Who is behind all of this pepper?
Anita promised to send me more material. Material which never arrived.
She was convincing but she didn’t claim to be, nor did I decide, that she was behind the pepper phenomenon.
Assuming that Spice Island was a long distance call, I got on the horn with McCormick’s.
They put me straight through to Mack Barrett, their current Director of Communications.
As soon as I started to question him about pepper, Mack became suspicious.
“This is sensitive stuff as far as we’re concerned.”
“I don’t know how much information is proprietary.”
“We can’t go too far, I’m afraid, in discussing pepper…. [REDACTED] “We’re inrestricted areas here- it can take us into cost and strategy and that is information our competitors might want to have.”
Suddenly, a new question occured to me. I asked Mack, “I know that pepper is a spice but what is salt?”
“I should know the answer to that question,” he said. “I’ll get back to you on that.” He never did.
My questions were still unanswered. Why would restaurants give away valuable pepper as if it were water? What were they getting in return? When was was it going to be payback time? What was salt?
Why were people dodging me? Morton’s still hadn’t called me back, my email to the Malaysian Trade Council was still unanswered, Anita hadn’t sent me the information she’d promised and I was still not able to find any Pepper Council.
The world’s greatest marketer is out there, too shy to take her or his place in the spotlight; like the anonymous genius who started selling stickers with college names for the back windshields of cars, and water bottlers’ brilliant designation of a new kind of cheapskate- the sort of person who orders ‘tap water.’
Like so many P.R. stories, we may never understand the machinations of hidden persuadors on our daily behavior, seasoned by forces whose motives we don’t know, or understand.
Stay vigilant!
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