Frank Muir on Lay's

Lay’s potato chip commercial has become a miniseries in Idaho. I’m gonna give you my final episode next. We all know the story by now. It’s been on talk shows, in the paper…the news. During the Fiesta Bowl where one of the Gems of the Potato State is playing in the biggest Bowl game imaginable, Lay’s comes on with an ad that discusses their wonderful potato chip product and attributes the superior quality to the farmers who grow their potatoes…from 5 or 6 states and Idaho is never mentioned as one of them.

 Yesterday a Lay’s spokesperson gave his explanation and it was very smooth but didn’t give us an answer. Frank Muir, Executive Director of the Idaho Potato Commission, and who, by the way supported the Fiesta Bowl with their own ads, gave me a straight up response: “Frito-Lay buys a lot of potatoes from Idaho but it’s our understanding that they produced that commercial long before they knew who was going to be coming to the Fiesta Bowl and their intent wasn’t to represent the highest percent production potato states they were really looking for the large population markets because they’re trying to advertise to as many people as they can and one of their focuses is to look like they’re sourcing all their potatoes locally. They were trying to show they were buying potatoes from all over the country but they targeted states like Texas, Florida, Michigan which have large population bases they didn’t use Idaho because of our 1.3 million people…not enough people in their mind to note in terms of advertising.

 So it it was a business decision, not a slap in the face.