Ketchup
2004-12-02 18:33:14.333329+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments
Red Hat's Robert Young is fond of using the "ketchup analogy" when talking about the Red Hat brand, so fond that for a while it was a running gag; at some panel Linus was reported to have said "not the ketchup story again...". It's even mentioned in the company trademark guidelines.
Malcolm Gladwell talks about why there's been no innovation in the flavor of ketchup, only in the packaging, in over a century.
This isn't strictly true, there are niche brands: we use a sweetenerless ketchup (ie: tomato paste, vinegar, cassia bark (aka "cinnamon"), celery seed and probably some other assorted spices), and the health food store has variants with assorted sweeteners besides corn syrup, but compared to, say, mustard, it's been dead static.
A good look at marketing, the perception of flavors and tastes, and tradition.