Stephen and Dave stroll down memory lane to discover just how the Willy Wonka bar came to be. Dave was a little disappointed. But you won’t be.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller.
I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.
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Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Stephen Semple. And the topic whispered in my ear this morning was one that Stephen reminded me that I requested because we’ve-
Stephen Semple:
And you’ve remembered so well.
Dave Young:
That’s the fun part of being me is I like to hide my own Easter eggs. We have talked about so many brands of chocolate, and I think I mentioned that sometime we need to talk about Wonka.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
And I kind of wish you’d told me beforehand because I’d go back and watch the movie just for the fun of it. I haven’t watched the latest one, the Timothée Chalamet or whatever.
Stephen Semple:
I watched it on a flight recently because it was one of those ones where I didn’t want to run the risk of spending the money and going to the theater for it.
Dave Young:
Sure. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
So I was on a flight and it was one of the movies, and I thought, “Oh, I’ll watch this.” And it was actually a good rendition. It’s the prequel, is how it’s set.
Dave Young:
Oh, it’s the origin story.
Stephen Semple:
It’s the origin story, and it’s good.
Dave Young:
Oh, cool.
Stephen Semple:
It’s good. I enjoyed it.
Dave Young:
I’m going to have to watch it.
Stephen Semple:
I thought they did a nice job of it. Yeah.
Dave Young:
Well, we’re actually recording these on a Saturday morning. Maybe I’ll talk to Julie and see if we can watch Wonka this afternoon.
Stephen Semple:
I think you’d enjoy it.
Dave Young:
It might be kind of fun.
Stephen Semple:
I think you’d enjoy it.
Dave Young:
So what’d you find out? I’m dying to know. Was there really a golden ticket?
Stephen Semple:
Well, you’re just going to have to wait and see.
Dave Young:
Did he really dress that way?
Stephen Semple:
It’s the late 1960s, and the candy business is in a bit of a slump. There hasn’t been really much innovation. It’s completely controlled by Mars and Hershey at this point.
Dave Young:
Probably the American Dental Association had just formed.
Stephen Semple:
And what we’ve got is we’ve got this food executive, Kenneth Mason, who’s looking to shake things up at Quaker Oats. He’s an executive at Quaker Oats. And Quaker Oats is famous for oatmeal and Cap’n Crunch cereal.
Dave Young:
And the old Quaker dude in the hat staring at you from the box. Sure.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, that’s it. And Kenneth Mason sees a bigger opportunity. Now, he graduated with a degree in English from Yale before going into the food business, and he has aspirations to become president of Quaker. And he’s about to head into candy. So he goes, “You know what? I really want to make a big splash in this division.” Because in the 1960s, candy is boring, there’s no new innovation, there’s no advertising going on. Mason believes, “This is my opportunity to create the next new thing, make my mark, and become president of the company.”
But he needs a launching pad to create that splash. And he’s read the book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it inspires him what to do. And this idea went on to become a $2.8 billion business. Wonka is a big deal. But it starts with this book that’s about to become a film, and he wants to tie in to the movie. He basically convinces Quaker to finance the movie. So they give the movie company like $3 million, which is like $23 million today. And they want to get Wonka candy out at the same time. New candy in the movie, tie the two together.
These two things has never been done before. This is a brand new idea of literally making a movie for the candy that you’re about to launch. And the film industry is really excited about this because the film industry is at a low point. There’s been lots of box office failures. Over half the homes in the United States now have a TV. And here’s what’s happened to weekly movie attendance. In 1963, weekly, so people going to a movie once a week, was 44 million people in 1963. By the end of the decade, by the end of the 60s, it’s down to 20 million people. That’s a huge decline.
Dave Young:
Television.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. So basically, the industry is also looking for new blood and new ideas. So this idea of Quaker coming along and fully financing a movie, Hollywood’s like, “Woo-hoo, This is awesome.” But there’s one thing they want to do. They want to change the title, not Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but they want to change the title to Willy Wonka.
Dave Young:
Yeah, sure.
Stephen Semple:
Because they want to do the Willy Wonka bar. But they got to come up with an idea really quickly because the movie’s being made, they don’t have any product right now. So the easiest and fastest thing to make is a chocolate bar, but that’s a crowded space and it’s a risk. It’s got to be a hit. Well, the movie’s a hit today because it’s become a classic, but at the time that it came out in the box office, because it was released in 1971, it was a flop.
That year, they were competing with Dirty Harry, Clockwork Orange, The French Connection. It was really hard to stand out. It was a musical. Musicals have been declining. So the Wonka Bar did not get the lift it was hoping for from the movie. But Mason is still trying to create ideas for the Wonka brand, and he still wants to stay true to this idea. He still believes that there’s something here. So he doubles down and he wants to come up with new candies that were not on the market. So the first idea was the Everlasting Gobstopper.
Dave Young:
I remember it. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Right? Because it was like the-
Dave Young:
The jawbreaker that never ends.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. It was a new manufacturing technology, and he wanted to make the candy look like the candy in the film and make it last longer than anything in the market. So it’s the mid-1970s, he’s still trying to make a hit in the candy business, and there’s lots of pressure from the board.
And there’s these jawbreakers being made by Breakers. And basically, that’s what they did, is they took that idea and they turned it into the Everlasting Gobstopper by tripling the layers with each being a different flavor. So basically, as you’re having it, the flavor changes.
Dave Young:
Changes. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Five years later, they launched the Gobstopper, it’s mid-1970s. And here’s the interesting thing, the movie starts to take off.
Dave Young:
Because it’s the reverse of what they intended to happen.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. The movie starts to take off. Guess what ends up happening?
Dave Young:
Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.
[Empire Builders Ad]
Dave Young:
Let’s pick up our story where we left off. And trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.
Stephen Semple:
Guess what ends up happening? It takes off well enough that Kenneth Mason gets his dream and he becomes the president of Quaker.
Dave Young:
Oh, it all works out happy in the end for him.
Stephen Semple:
Well, and he passes Wonka over to Bob Anderson. And Bob Anderson was a guy from Wrigley. And Bob does a really cool innovation. So they take a look at, there’s these gravel bits of hardened sugar at the bottom of the Gobstopper machine. So they’re taking a look at these things, and they make them sour. So they’re these little granular things, they make them sour. And Bob takes a box that was originally designed for cigarettes, and he puts them in it. And basically, when you shake it, it drops out two flavors. So two little bits will come out. And he’s wandering around, and there’s doodles from one of the designers that the food scientists saw, and the doodles looked like the candies that they were making.
Dave Young:
Good.
Stephen Semple:
And they asked the artists, “Well, what do you call these little characters?” “I call them Nerds.”
Dave Young:
Nerds. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
So Nerds, which were basically made from the waste from the Gobstopper machine, put them in this little cigarette package, and 215 million boxes of Nerds was sold in the first 18 months. And it was one of the first candies to use a character. So that was one of the really big innovative things of this character on the side of the box.
Dave Young:
I’m familiar with Nerds, but I guess I don’t tie Wonka to them. Maybe I don’t look at the package enough, but yeah they’re Wonka Nerds.
Stephen Semple:
They’re Wonka Nerds. And in 1988, Nestle buys Wonka. And then later it was bought by the Ferrara Group. So Wonka was always part of a big company. But the thing I really found interesting about the approach of Kenneth Mason is his desire was to become president of Quaker. And then he has this little division that’s kind of being ignored. And what he realized was this was an opportunity for him.
And the opportunity was, be super innovative, stand out, roll the dice, take that risk, and if it works, you get the prize. In business today, I think not enough people who are running divisions or particular departments think that way, that it really is this opportunity to do that innovation and take that risk and do those different things because you’re in this little corner where you can be a little bit more innovative.
Dave Young:
Sure. It’s a cool story that he did do that, he won for taking the risks.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
You’re never going to win by just sitting back and doing the same thing that you’ve been doing. I have to admit though, that I am-
Stephen Semple:
I know you’re a little disappointed.
Dave Young:
… a little disappointed that it’s not a true movie. It’s a candy made after a movie, not a movie made after a candy.
Stephen Semple:
Well, yeah.
Dave Young:
But that’s okay too.
Stephen Semple:
That’s okay too. But the thing I found also that’s quite interesting, and I think this shaped a little bit of the way Kenneth Mason looks at the world, is before entering the food business, his degree was in English from Yale. And I believe today, well, I know today, we underappreciate people who have fine arts. I don’t know would you define English as a fine art, but more those soft skilled-
Dave Young:
Yeah, just a liberal arts education of some kind. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Liberal arts education is undervalued in business today. We’re looking for people with MBAs and engineering degrees. And look, all those things are important. Heck, my degree’s a business degree. But a lot of innovation comes from people who approach problems from a different angle and look at the world in a different way. And those are the people who come with these more liberal arts degrees.
And it’s amazing how much innovation is driven from folks who look at the… Heck, Steve Jobs had a degree in calligraphy. And I think business far too often is just hiring people looking for, “Do you have a math degree? Do you have a science degree? Do you have a business degree? Oh, you’ve got a degree in English? Yeah, we’re not interested.”
Dave Young:
Yeah. Honestly, I’ve been thinking about how big AI has become, and I think there’s probably an advantage to having a broad-based liberal arts degree if you’re trying to figure out how to talk to an AI and get it to do what you want to do.
Stephen Semple:
Yes, especially in terms of training it.
Dave Young:
Especially if you’re trying to get it to do something creative. If all you speak is analytical phrases, that’s what you’re going to get back, right? AIs tend to echo. It’s not strictly an echo chamber, but they’re going to try to please you and meet you where you are. And if where you are is analytical, that’s what you’re going to get back.
Stephen Semple:
Well, and that’s what it’s actually designed to do. If you ask a question in an analytical manner, it’s going to give you an answer in an analytical manner. That’s what it’s actually supposed to do.
Dave Young:
Exactly.
Stephen Semple:
So, Dave, you asked the question about Wonka.
Dave Young:
There it is.
Stephen Semple:
There’s your answer for Wonka.
Dave Young:
Yeah. Let me put out a request because I’ve been saying this. At the Wizard Academy, we’re a vice chancellor, we have an elevator in our wizard tower. Any modern wizard tower has an elevator. And I always say, when I’m giving a tour, “Above the fifth floor button,” which takes you to the star deck, the roof of the tower, it opens up in a little vestibule on the rooftop, “I’d like to have a button, a Wonka button, an elevator button that sits right above the number five.” So if any of our listeners, if you’re a designer and you do 3D printing and that kind of thing, man, make me a button and send it. I’ll glue it to the inside of the elevator and we’ll have a Wonka button in our elevator.
Stephen Semple:
There you go. That’s awesome.
Dave Young:
Does it sound like a deal?
Stephen Semple:
Sounds like a deal,
Dave Young:
All right. I don’t know how to make a Wonka button. I know somebody does. I’ve been asking for this for years. Nobody sent me one yet.
Stephen Semple:
Well, it just shows you how great our listeners are. They’ll get right on it.
Dave Young:
Absolutely. I can’t wait.
Stephen Semple:
All right. Awesome. Thanks, David.
Dave Young:
Thank you, Stephen. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big fat juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.
