AN EPIC AMERICAN JOURNEY THE STORY OF LEWIS AND CLARK
Play-Doh was originally used to clean wallpaper. That’s right, the childhood toy was first developed at the request of the Kroger grocery store chain — which needed a way to remove coal residue from wallpaper in its stores. But it turned out that kids liked the stuff even more than Kroger, and decades after its debut, Play-Doh was re-released and marketed specifically to children. TV ads, newspaper articles, and product placement turned the putty into a household name. But it never would have happened if the inventors hadn’t paid attention to what people were actually doing with their product. Marketing guru David Vinjamuri calls this accidental branding. “This does not mean that the founders didn’t work hard and make a lot of smart decisions,” Vinjamuri writes. But real branding success comes when you pay attention to what customers are doing in the real world. As a word of caution to big business, Vinjamuri says “the brand you want to watch out for” is the one that “understands the customer in a way you don’t.” Play-Doh is the perfect example. The Play-Doh people were teachers and engineers with a small budget. They couldn’t afford to spend years developing the product and testing it with If you wanted to, you could go online right now and view a detailed map of every inch of the country with a simple Google search. With technology like that, it’s easy to forget that not so long ago, much of the United States was largely an uninhabited wilderness. When Thomas Jefferson organized the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, he knew little of the vast swath of land he had bought on behalf of the country. To survey the newly acquired terrain, Jefferson commissioned two men, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark, to lead an expedition across the Continental Divide. They set off from St. Louis 213 years ago this month, on May 14, 1804. When asked what is so enduring about the story of Lewis and Clark, historian Stephen E. Ambrose notes, “They were first. They led the way. Everyone who canoes on the Missouri River paddles in their wake. Everyone who crosses the Rocky Mountains does so in their footsteps.” The expedition they led was truly a journey into uncharted territory, which can be hard to comprehend for contemporary Americans. Lewis and Clark departed with 33 people and encountered many native tribes, both friendly and hostile, during their excursion. Perhaps the most famous Native American they met was Sacagawea,
a Lemhi Shoshone woman who provided the party with invaluable guidance.
a controlled consumer group. And they didn’t have the money for a massive marketing campaign. Instead, they looked around, saw that kids wanted to play with wallpaper cleaner, and then marketed it on a wider scale. Entrepreneurs and small businesses are particularly adept at this. They have the maneuverability and flexibility to change strategy at a moment’s notice. They’re also usually hungrier for success than a big corporation, and they’re willing to take bigger risks to achieve that success. At the end of the day, everyone is competing for consumer attention. According to the Harvard School of Business, it’s becoming a very precious commodity — especially in the digital age. By marketing something that consumers are already interested in, you’re already halfway around the baseball diamond while the competition’s starting on home plate. So if your clients are asking for Y, don’t waste their time by trying to sell them X. Sure, X might be your marketing baby. You may have spent lots of money on X. But if you make household cleaners and your only consumers are children, then you’re no longer marketing to Kroger — you’re marketing to kids. And that’s a good thing! Nearly 18 months later, on November 7, 1805, the expedition became the first party of Americans to see the Pacific Ocean. Remarkably, despite the incredible hardship of the journey, only one man, Sergeant Charles Floyd, died during the trip. The cause of death, innocuously enough, was likely a ruptured appendix. In addition to mapping out a significant portion of the continental United States, Lewis and Clark also identified scores of native species that were previously unknown. The geographical, botanical, and anthropological discoveries of the pair are still marveled at to this day through the remarkable journals they kept. The story of Lewis and Clark is an essential part of American history and a powerful account of courage and discovery. Geography professor John Loga Allen succinctly summed up the tale’s allure: “It is the American Epic.” When we think of the American ideal of perseverance and ambition against insurmountable odds, it is hard not to think of Lewis and Clark.
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