Imponderables

by David Feldman

  Why doesn't the milk industry simply convert all of its containers to plastic, which are a breeze to open and close securely? The cost of the material is approximately the same for both paper and plastic, between 10 and 11 cents for a half-gallon container, according to Frank Finnegan of New York's Dellwood Foods. But there are practical advantages to paper containers. Assembly lines can operate much faster on paper than on plastic, saving time and, therefore, enough money for the industry to prefer paper packaging, all other things being equal.

  Some people complain that there is an off taste created by oxidation in plastic containers, although this issue is hotly disputed by the plastics industry. Another controversial issue that works in favor of paper is whether or not plastic responds as well to heat and light as treated paper. Some professors at Cornell University reported that plastic containers can lose as much as 10-15 percent of the vitamin value of the milk they hold when exposed to heat or strong light.

  If consumers showed a strong preference for plastic containers, Finnegan indicated that the industry would probably respond to their wishes, although the scattered complaints he now receives indicate that most milk buyers have become reconciled to cartons’ less than perfect design.

  Another reason the milk industry might be reluctant to give up its traditional paper packaging is that the humble gabled carton is one of the most instantaneously recognizable items on the supermarket shelf. Is there any inherent reason why yogurt containers should be tall and thin and cottage cheese containers short and squat? Not really, but we would not need labels or brand names to pick out which container held yogurt or cottage cheese, or catsup or mustard for that matter.

  The tall, streamlined look of milk cartons, if forsaken for a more spherical plastic container, might not only be more difficult to stack in quantity on the supermarket shelf, but less distinctive looking. Any designer can create packaging that differentiates it from others in the same product category, but the risk in radically changing the packaging—providing consumers with false cues about what product they are going to buy—is simply not worth the gamble.

  As it is, most of us could probably pick our favorite type of milk while sleepwalking. If we see a red and black container, it is likely to be homogenized milk; a blue and white package means low-fat or skim milk; and a green carton denotes butter-milk. If we see plastic containers, we can assume they are holding gallons.

  The dairy industry hasn't deliberately tried to create packages impossible to open and close. It has simply hit upon packaging that is cheap, safe, and convenient from its point of view. It is extremely difficult and extremely expensive to make paper containers that can be opened easily and sealed tightly. Unless the industry feels that its packaging affects its bottom line negatively (in which case it would switch to plastic rather than “new, improved” paper), it has no reason to change.

  How does Kraft get “five ounces of milk in every slice” of American Singles?

  “Five ounces of milk in every slice” is an effective advertising slogan for at least three reasons. First, it reinforces the desired wholesome image for Kraft Singles, especially since the product is largely consumed by children and usually purchased by their nutritionally concerned parents. Second, it identifies a value inherent in the product. A slice of Kraft Singles costs approximately 15 cents; if it contains 5 ounces of milk, it's not such a bad deal. Third, it provides what advertisers call a “unique selling proposition.” Simply stated, if a particular brand can make a distinctive claim for its product, it will carve out a niche that cannot be broken by the opposition as long as the unique selling proposition is broadcast to enough people for a long enough time. Kraft has no problems in this regard, as it dominates the processed cheese-food category and overwhelms any other cheese maker in advertising reach.

  There is one corollary to the unique selling proposition principle that doesn't get discussed too often: If you can make a claim for your product that is true for other brands as well, you can still “own” the claim—as long as you appropriate the promise in advertising first and proclaim it loudly enough. Ivory Soap's claim, for example, to be 99 44100 percent pure may be mathced by other soaps, but no other manufacturer would be stupid enough to base an advertising campaign on the notion that it was 99 63/100 percent pure. Simply by bringing up the issue, consumers would think of Ivory instinctively, not even hearing the rival product's claim.

  Other cleaners besides Ajax are “stronger than dirt,” but no rival would want to trumpet the claim. Ajax has already staked out the territory.

  Kraft's “five ounces” campaign may be a unique selling proposition as an advertising slogan, but there is nothing mystical about how Kraft reduces a whole bunch of milk into one little slice—it is, actually, the story of how all cheese is made. The genius behind the Kraft campaign, however, is that the guarantee of the quantity of milk in each slice reassures skeptical consumers about the wholesomeness of a “process cheese food.”

  Kraft was kind enough to detail the process of how it produces a slice of Singles, and the description by consumer representative Jane C. Venters was so clear, we'll quote it verbatim:

  In all cheesemaking, ten pounds of milk are required to make one pound of natural cheese. Milk by its very nature contains approximately 87 percent water. During cheesemaking the water and removed. The portion removed is called the whey, and it accounts for about nine pounds of the original ten pounds of milk. The remaining solid mass, which has been formed by coagulating the milk, is called the curd. The curd is pressed and formed into what we know as natural cheese, and represents about one pound of the original ten pounds of milk.

  Kraft American Singles Pasteurized Process Cheese Food is made from natural cheese. As we said above, ten pounds of milk are required to make one pound of natural cheese. Therefore, with this information, you can calculate that 5-oz. of milk will yield ½-oz. of cheese. A ¾-oz. slice of American Singles contains about ½-oz. of natural cheese. The remaining ¼-oz. contains other ingredients as listed in the ingredient statement on our packages.

  As you can see from the above information, there are indeed 5-oz. of milk in a slice of Kraft American Singles Pasteurized Process Cheese Food. We assure you that our research scientists verified the accuracy of this statement before the commercial was produced and aired. All advertising campaigns are carefully documented, and are thoroughly reviewed to insure their truthfulness and validity.

  What are the remaining ¼-oz. of ingredients that comprise a slice of Kraft Singles? Here are the contents of the label: “Natural Cheddar Cheese, Water, Whey, Sodium Citrate, Whey Protein Concentrate, Skim Milk, Milkfat, Sodium Phosphate, Salt, Sorbic Acid as a preservative, Annatto and Apocarotenal (color).” Much of the other ¼-oz. of each slice, then, is clearly made up of water, both in the form of straight H2O and whey byproducts, which are the watery stuff normally taken out of natural cheese. These additional ingredients are why Kraft cannot call its Singles cheese, but is forced to resort to tongue twisters like Pasteurized Process Cheese Food. The meaning of each of these four words is specified by the Food and Drug Administration.

  How do the police make crowd estimates?

  If you engage in a war, folks at the home front want to know the body counts. Throw a parade or a riot, and people want crowd estimates. It's human nature to want to judge the failure or success of an enterprise by quantifying it.

  The unenviable task of making crowd estimates usually falls on the local police department, and parades are usually the occasions for these estimates. The most famous parade in the United States, the Tournament of Roses parade, held in Pasadena, California, every New Year's Day, has, since 1930, consistently estimated its attendance at from 1 to 1.5 million. The Pasadena police would be quite happy not to make crowd estimates, but the press needs figures (it just doesn't sound right to start a newspaper story about the parade by saying, “A whole bunch of people showed up in Pasadena…”), and politicians need to measure the success of the parade in order
to boast of their accomplishment.

  But how are these estimates made? Imagine the logistical nightmare of trying to count heads at a ticker tape parade in lower Manhattan, with its asymmetrical streets, floating debris (obscuring vision), and the staggering numbers involved.

  For several years, Michael Guerin, the special events public information officer for the City of Pasadena, has had the responsibility of figuring out the attendance at the Tournament of Roses parade. Guerin flies over the parade site in a helicopter. Obviously, he doesn't count heads. From his years of experience, he knows what 104,000 people look like bunched up together, for that is the capacity of the Rose Bowl, home of the football institution that follows the parade. Using the Rose Bowl crowd as a benchmark, Guerin tries to conceptualize the 100,000+ people he has seen in the circular stadium into the linear crowd along the parade route. This can't be a precise measurement; after all, the parade route spans exactly five and a half miles, and he must also count spectators who look at the floats in the formation areas, where they are assembled, as well as the post-parade area where the floats are put on display.

  Since the population of Pasadena is well under 200,000, local officials are used to skepticism about their estimates of 1,000,000 plus spectators, and were challenged in 1983 by Peter Apanel, founder of the Doo-Dah parade, a spoof of the Tournament of Roses parade. Dubious about official estimates, Apanel commissioned photographers to shoot 442 sequenced snapshots of spectators lining the Doo-Dah parade (which that year, police and Apanel agreed, attracted more than 50,000 viewers) at fixed intervals. Apanel then counted every single person in those pictures and extrapolated density levels applicable to the New Year's parade. Although he claimed that for two-thirds of the route, the shorter Doo-Dah parade had as much or more spectator density, he multiplied the density level by two when estimating the Tournament of Roses parade crowd. By factoring in the fans sitting in the reserved bleachers and the longer route of the Tournament of Roses parade, Apanel insisted that the police estimate was way off—that no more than 360,000 people could have attended the parade in 1983, or about one-fourth of the police estimate.

  Robert Gillette, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, did a little figuring of his own. He measured the depth of the standing room area at 23 feet, marked on one side by the blue line behind which all spectators must stand and on the other side by the buildings at the back of the crowd. Multiplying this standing room area by the 5.5-mile parade route, Gillette calculated that the parade route provided 1,336,000 square feet (not all of this space was occupied, since attendees toward the back can and often do move about freely, but Gillette did not factor in unused space). He then assumed that each attendee occupied two square feet (one foot thick and two feet wide). Dividing the 2 square feet into the 1,336,000 square feet, Gillette arrived at the figure of 668,000 as the maximum number of people that the Tournament of Roses parade route could accommodate.

  Other skeptics have arrived at different estimates, including some Pasadena-based California Institute of Technology professors, who put a half million as the maximum number. Guerin, however, feels confident in his approximation and notes that in the helicopter, he is always amazed how fluid the pedestrian traffic is. In the early morning, it always looks like attendance is bad, but somehow new people keep appearing. Guerin added that although the official Pasadena estimate is hardly precise, it's as good a guess as anyone else's and that police don't receive any kind of special training or education in crowd estimation.

  Imponderables spoke to New York officials about how they make crowd estimates. In most cases, the task is left to the local police precinct where the parade takes place.

  The police make stabs at accuracy, but it is no more a science in New York than in Pasadena. The most popular technique for Fifth Avenue parades (such as the St. Patrick's Day parade or Columbus Day parade) is to count the number of rows of spectators behind the blue wooden barriers that are placed on each side of the street. Each barrier is fourteen feet long. Assuming that the population behind each barrier will reflect the parade route as a whole, the police estimate how many spectators fit into the square footage available—in essence, they duplicate the methodology of Doo-Dah founder Apanel without using photographs, and simply assume that density levels will not vary greatly at different points in the parade route.

  Another, more ingenious method of estimating crowd size is by examining the quantity of artifacts they leave behind. To say it less delicately, one way of counting a crowd is to weigh how much garbage it leaves behind. Since sanitation trucks are weighed electronically at the disposal site, it has always been an easy matter to measure the amount of debris left after New York's famed ticker tape parades down the “canyon of heroes.”

  Counting garbage is not a perfect scheme for measuring crowd sizes, however. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, for example, is notorious for its large attendance but pitiful lack of garbage, which rarely surpasses ten tons. Even the Tournament of Roses parade weighs in at around a measly forty tons a year. These parades are pikers compared to the ticker tapes, but the latter have the advantage of artificial inflation—in recent years, some parade committees have actually imported shredded paper from out of the city to be thrown at passing heroes. Not much ticker tape is thrown anymore. Computer printouts are the replacement. More and more skyscrapers are “climate controlled,” with windows incapable of being opened, reducing the opportunities for many to contribute to the mess. All of these factors make it difficult to correlate crowd size with quantity of garbage, but the New York City Department of Sanitation is besieged with requests for the garbage count, and most observers feel there is some connection between the amount of paper thrown and the frenzy and enthusiasm of the celebrants.

  For Casey Kasem fans everywhere, here are the top five garbage parades of all time in New York:

  5. 1969 Mets parade—1254 tons.

  4. Iranian hostages’ return, January 30, 1981—1262 tons.

  3. Douglas MacArthur's return, April 20, 1951—3249 tons.

  2. John Glenn, March 1, 1962—3474 tons.

  1. V-J Day, August 14, 1945—5438 tons.

  By all acounts, the V-J Day parade was the most spirited and most heavily attended.

  Every single source I spoke to about this Imponderable conceded that precision in estimating crowds was impossible and the task itself of less than earth-shattering importance. None was trained to execute this task. And all of them felt that newspapers and politicians would force them to continue with the madness.

  Why don't we ever see baby pigeons?

  Pigeons, or rock doves, as your high school biology teacher would more properly call them, are known in the birding trade as ledge nesters. In the wild, they build nests on cliffs, canyons, and rocky terrains. But pigeons are just as comfortable using man-made structures such as bridges and ledges of buildings. You won't find pigeon nests in trees.

  Baby pigeons have an extremely high metabolism, eating a large proportion of their body weight every day. They grow so fast that by the time their mothers kick them out of the house (usually within one month of birth), baby pigeons, like all birds, are close to or have already achieved full size. When you think you see babies loitering with their parents, you are probably spotting two different species of birds.

  The only way to distinguish between an immature and mature pigeon is to examine its plumage. Younger birds tend to have raggedy feathers, especially at the ends of their tail feathers. Although pigeons have varying colorations, mature birds tend to have brighter feathers.

  Why do they sell 40-, 60-, 75-, and 100-watt bulbs?

  Imponderables could never understand why manufacturers made bulbs with these wattages. Wouldn't it be more aesthetic, more symmetrical, to make 50-, 75-, and 100-watt bulbs? Was there some technological or marketing reason for the present configurations?

  After doing quite a bit of our own research and enlisting the help of several lighting companies, no one could provide a definitive explanat
ion for the initial selection of the enduringly popular 40- and 60- and 100-watt bulbs. But James H. Jensen, at General Electric, supplied a fascinating history of the first light bulbs manufactured for home use.

  Thomas Edison's first lamps were sized to equal the light output of the gas mantles that were then in use. In fact, when electric lamps were first manufactured, bulbs were not rated in watts but in candlepower, a measurement of their light output. Jensen theorizes that the 40-, 60-, and 100-watt bulbs were designed to correspond to the light output (or candlepower) of lanterns already in use, for they were the first three wattages marketed when the tungsten filament was introduced in 1907. These were the only three sizes offered until 1916, when 50- and 75-watt bulbs were also sold.

  Jensen notes that a major reason for the introduction of the 50- and 75-watt sizes was that these bulbs were literally given away free to customers by electric utility companies, such as Commonwealth Edison and Detroit Edison. It might be difficult to conceive of the need to sell the public on using a source of energy, but it was not always a foregone conclusion that the country would quickly and universally adopt electric energy in its homes. Electricity was waging a marketing fight with gas, just as the natural gas and home heating oil companies today are trying to shake off excess supply by urging consumers to switch energy allegiance.