Orville Redenbacher was a Purdue University-educated agricultural scientist. Photo from Purdue University.

By Randal Hill
Guest Columnist

Imagine, for a few moments, that you are a fly on the wall.

It’s 1970 and you’re in the offices of a top-rated Chicago marketing and advertising firm. Folks there are listening attentively to Orville Redenbacher, a Purdue University-educated agricultural scientist with a somewhat goofy — almost cartoonish — appearance.

For three hours, Redenbacher has gleefully extolled the virtues of the “gourmet” popping corn he and his business partner Charles Bowman call Red Bow, a blending of their last names. “Reddy,” as he calls himself, is there to learn the best marketing strategies for their product, which has never sold very well.

At the end of the meeting, Redenbacher is told to come back in one week for the recommendations.

What he is told later leaves him almost gasping in disbelief. According to the Windy City wise men, he and Bowman should rename their product Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet popping corn. And, even more importantly, that Redenbacher’s grinning “country bumpkin” image — wavy, snow-white hair; thick, horned-rim glasses and an absurdly oversize bow tie — should grace the front of every package.

Redenbacher is then handed a bill for $13,000 (about $105,000 in today’s currency).

Ouch!

He pays the fee while silently fuming and undoubtedly thinking, THIS is what we’re being charged for seven days’ worth of collaboration from a highly recommended advertising team?

But, as it turned out, the unorthodox advice was akin to hitting a home run with the bases loaded. Before long, America’s newest celebrity was appearing in national TV ads, smiling broadly and proclaiming, “You’ll like it better or my name isn’t Orville Redenbacher.”

As a result, the scrumptious snack flew off grocery shelves everywhere, and by the mid-1970s the brand had captured one-third of the lucrative popcorn market — proof that snack-loving customers were willing to shell out more cash for popcorn that was larger, lighter, more flavorful and left few, if any, unpopped kernels.

Popcorn had always fascinated Indiana-born Orville Clarence Redenbacher. Named after aviation pioneer Orville Wright, Redenbacher partnered with Charles Bowman, a fellow Purdue agricultural graduate. Together, they bought a small corn-seed company and set about toiling six long years and experimenting with over 30,000 popping-corn hybrids before declaring in 1965 that they had reached popcorn paradise with what they felt was the ideal product.

Their original offering — Red Bow Gourmet popping corn — soon appeared on market shelves. When buyers saw the higher price, though, they pretty much ignored it.

In 1970, Redenbacher and Bowman decided they needed guidance from savvy marketeers. So Orville traveled to Chicago, where he met with the marketing team.

Were the Hoosier State partners charged too much for the unorthodox suggestions? Before you answer, consider this: In 1976, food giant Hunt and Wesson paid $4 million to buy the thriving company. ($4 million = $22 million in today’s cash.)

Yet Redenbacher always grumbled that he had been charged a fortune for the name that his mother had thought up when Orville was born back in 1907.

Thanks, Mom. You did your part.