What I find terribly interesting about this article is that it’s in a Canadian newspaper – and they’re not even selling AmeriCone dream in Canada yet!
From the Ottawa Citizen.com (subscription required, try BugMeNot.com for password):
Pop-culture labels may take chill off ice cream sales
Misty Harris, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, March 30, 2007Just when you thought celebrities couldn’t become any more intrusive, they invade the dairy case.
In the last two months, ice cream manufacturers have introduced flavours branded after everyone from Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert to Nashville outlaw Willie Nelson. There’s even a line of American Idol ice cream, appropriately featuring tastes such as Hollywood Cheesecake.
Although this year marks the 20th anniversary of mass-market celebrity ice cream — Ben & Jerry’s Grateful Dead-inspired Cherry Garcia made its debut in 1987 — the International Dairy Foods Association says the gimmick is only just starting to reach fever pitch. And Kim Lopez-Walters, senior food and beverage strategist at Iconoculture, a Minnesota-based consumer research and advisory firm, says much of what we’re seeing is part of the individualization of commercial culture.
“You can personalize the (dessert) experience,” she says.Buying your favourite star’s ice cream is a way of saying “this is who I am and I’m reinforcing my identity with what I’m eating.”
…
Since Ben & Jerry’s introduced Stephen Colbert’s AmeriCone Dream in early March, for example, the ice cream has earned nearly 90,000 Google hits, been name-dropped numerous times on Colbert’s hit show, and made headlines in media outlets as diverse as Rolling Stone and Access Hollywood.
Ben & Jerry’s got even more publicity when they unveiled Willie Nelson’s Country Peach Cobbler and Colbert promptly declared war on the rival celebrity’s dessert, jokingly sniping that Nelson’s ice cream was made from “shredded tax forms and hash.”
Coincidentally, the country crooner’s ice cream was pulled from shelves shortly after its launch because it contained an unlisted ingredient: not grass, but wheat.
This is EXACTLY what I’m talking about. They just won’t shut up about it. Seems like a giant oversight on Ben & Jerry’s part. Most of the marketing job is done already.
BTW, Ottawa’s Spartacat? You’re ON NOTICE.
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They think it’s oversaturated? What an understatement. I saw a “Scott Baio’s Chocolate In Charge” ice cream in my local store.
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Oh!
Freddy Prinze’s “Choco and the Flan.”
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