Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Who eats Spam?

Spam, the brand, has an interesting situation in front of it. As a 70-year-old product--precooked pork butt in a can -- it is lucky to still be alive. But in those 70 years, the brand became the butt of jokes by Monty Python (Spamalot) and Weird Al Yankovic, and consequently was morphed into the very common term for junk email. Fame moves in mysterious ways.
Now the sales of Spam, the meat, are going up, up, up and parent company Hormel is running a big ad and marketing campaign and new campy website.
It seems spam email is helping sell Spam meat because the funny and unlikely connection between the two is making people curious. The ads and website satisfy the curiousity.
But do you know anyone who really eats Spam? Have you bought any lately? Based on the sales figures someone must be buying the stuff....maybe it is a secret pleasure....like governors have for hookers.
The company itself is mum. They finished a study of their core consumers and are not giving any hints of what they've found.
It's hard to figure out who's sending all that spam email---and almost as hard to figure out who eats Spam meat.
What is up with that?