We have a our first winner for our ‘kettle corn challenge’!

All the videos on YouTube: Velma’s Kettle Corn Channel

We try like hell to get people to pay attention by giving away kettle corn to people who want to appear online in these videos.

All the videos on YouTube: Velma’s Kettle Corn Channel

 8/18/08 update:

Hey look what I got!

I guess when you’ve got lawyers on staff, they’ve got to keep themselves busy somehow. “Let’s get that guy in the tent before he goes after our Pulitzer Prize stuff next!” (I had to remove the photo of me and a caption that went with it.) Here’s a link to the original article on the Boston Globe website.

===== Eric’s original text ======

OK, so I know this is no BIG deal, but there’s always something to bitch about when you get into the media. First, Erica never got back to me when this thing was going to be published. I know it’s just a little crappy side-bar thing she did, but I discovered that we were in the paper when I walked into my corporate job today and saw the article stuck on a cubicle wall. We didn’t get a link, even though a gave her a couple of magnets with our website on there. (They screwed up the TT Buds link too, I found their real one.)

The photographer originally came by on June 26th. I mentioned it on this blog post a while back.

While I’m still bashing everyone: I’ve known about T.T. Buds kettle corn for a while. I saw a bag of their stuff at a farm stand I was trying to get our stuff into. Their kettle corn looked kinda skimpy, it didn’t look like they used very much sugar to get a decent coating on it. But don’t take my word, see what Taquitos.NET said about them. Then read our review on the same website. On top of that they claim their stuff has a shelf life of at least a month. Yeah right. I take that back, if you hardly use any oil when popping, kettle corn will stay edible longer.

Yup. “Aren’t those kinda cheesy for a promotional item?” I guess. Here’s my dilemma: I want people to know about this website. We’ve got the URL on a banner underneath our table and it’s on the tent panel behind the kettle. It doesn’t exactly jump out at you and force you to memorize it. I also want to create a sort of Pavlovian response to our name–once you’ve tried our kettle corn and have come to like it. I want a reminder of our name and URL at home for some of our biggest fans. Think Homer Simpson: “Hmmmm….kettle corn…must have some Velma’s kettle corn.”

I figure every time you open your refrigerator (you’re hungry, that’s why you’re opening it in the first place, right?), you see the name and have that reminder that you liked Velma’s kettle corn. There’s the website address, I could order some now! Hunger=food=refrigerator=magnet=URL=sale.
That’s the theory anyway.

I ordered up 500 refrigerator magnets from magnets-for-less.com at 25 cents a piece. I guess if I print up thousands of them, I can get the price down to something like 15 cents a piece. I started to give a bunch away at the latest Springfield farmers’ market. Wasn’t sure how’d they go over, but everyone’s face lit up when I offered them this little token “chotchke”. A couple of people saw ‘em and asked to have one. I’m relieved that I can now offer a token reminder with an online sale. (Hey that was GOOD, lemme order some more.)

The next project I will be working on is a Velma’s t-shirt. I’ve got a couple of ideas and hopefully I can at least break even with them. Keep you posted when that happens.