Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Junior Mints

Who's gonna turn down a Junior Mint? It's chocolate, it's peppermint, it's delicious. How many of you remember this line whenever you see a box a Junior Mints? I do, and I have been buying Junior Mints ever since. But did you know that Seinfeld was turned down by M&M's and Lifesavers for this product placement? Here is a list of the top 10 Product Placements:

The Stories Behind 10 Famous Product Placements

And yes, there is a real J. Peterman. When his catalog was introduced on Seinfeld, he saw sales sky rocket! Then, he started to open several retail with the growth, but he had to file for bankruptcy and sold the brand name. With the help of John O'Hurley, the guy who played J. Peterman, and some people from the original company, he was able to buy back the name and relaunch the company. You can still get stuff from the J. Peterman Company.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As of former copywriter for The J. Peterman Company I feel compelled to point out an inaccuracy in your posting. The company did not see an increase in sales due to the Seinfeld storyline. In fact, the vast majority of viewers simply thought that the J. Peterman character was a figment of the show's imagination... The J. Peterman retail store division was already well under way when the show began to include the O'Hurley character. Alas, there was no real cause and effect between the show and the company. Jerry had been a long-time customer of the company well before that storyline. As I understood it at the time, the idea was not even Jerry's but rather was attributed to one of the show's writers, which I believe was Carol Leifer. I was actually the contact person for the Peterman Company for the Seinfeld episode's. It was great fun to read the scripts a couple of weeks prior to the actual episode. I was and still am a huge Seinfeld fan and still have several of those original scripts.

Art Vandelay said...

Thanks for correcting me on this, Robert. I always thought that there was a correlation because of something I saw on NBC a while ago.

The J. Peterman story is very interesting. I will have to get his book and the Harvard Business case to read one of these days.