Lay’s calls all 2,800 million of its potatoes local

What do Brian from California, Darrell from New England and Jack from Texas have in common?

All three of these men help bring potatoes to Frito-Lay, but more importantly for the company, perhaps, they’re starring in new Lay’s Potato Chips commercial.

The ads attempt to connect consumers with their chips. Frito-Lay, owned by Pepsi, even has a chip tracker on its Web site so you can see exactly where those potatoes made the transformation into a salty snack.

But the chip tracker also reveals how much Lay’s’ products must travel before they make it to the consumer. Potatoes grown for Lay’s in North Dakota, for example, have to travel at least as far as Wisconsin to the nearest Lay’s factory. After that, who knows where they end up. Hardly the impression the expensive advertising campaign was going for, one can only assume.

To add to the “natural” feel of its greasy products, Lay’s dressed up the roof of a subway station in Chicago with dangling spuds. Another point to hook consumers into the simple, local message of Lay’s is using only three ingredients: potatoes, oil and salt.

All this slick packaging doesn’t change what is truly happening at Frito-Lay’s factories. The company continues to ship potatoes across the country and push them through enormous factories onto your sandwich plate.

The sad thing is Lay’s could never compete with those potato growers without large advertising budgets. The farmers who are driving their potatoes down to the local farmers market every morning for the consumers who are frying up their own potatoes.

Potato chip buyers shouldn’t be bought over by this sort of advertising scheme. Like author Michael Pollan said, it might just be easier to avoid anything that’s advertised. Because companies are always going to try and market themselves to what consumers want. In this day and age, consumers are looking for local and they’re looking for simple, organic ingredients. Surprise, surprise: That’s exactly what Frito-Lay is now marketing, although from the looks of things they haven’t done much to change how local or how organic their product actually is.