The Scoop: The PR struggle to make sorghum a hot new food trend
If you’ve heard of sorghum, you may think of it as something used to feed pigs, or perhaps as a component in ethanol.
But the American-grown grain has the potential to become the next quinoa, especially as tariffs enhance the importance of grown-in-America products. Notably, it has twice as much protein as quinoa and four times as much as rice or corn – a major boon in a protein obsessed world. Sorghum can be popped like popcorn, used as the base for a grain bowl or made into beer, tea and syrup, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But the would-be super food has a few branding headwinds going against it. First is that name.
“The ‘sor’ is fine, but the ‘ghum’ implies maybe chewing gum,” said Claib Harris, head chef of a Kansas State University pub experimenting with recipes for the grain. “Maybe we could rebrand it into something else.”
Or that old-fashioned, gummy name could be a benefit.
“We like to think of sorghum as that under-the-radar rock star with a quirky name, just like açaí, chai or kombucha,” said Lanier Dabruzzi, director of nutrition and food innovation for the National Sorghum Producers.
Sorghum does actually have another name: milo. While that name might be cooler, evoking that boy you had a crush on in freshman math class, it also has a downside: that’s the name it’s known as on Kansas farms, where it’s used to slop pigs and cattle.
Why it matters: Doing PR for uncool food items is always tricky – but can yield huge dividends. Renaming the gnarly-sounding Patagonian toothfish to the exotic Chilean seabass pushed the delicious sea creature to the verge of extinction. A guerilla marketing campaign for kale turned it from a food known largely acting as a garnish on salad bars into the ubiquitous health food we know and tolerate today.
The successful food rebrand includes several elements: name changes, if needed, and helping people understand how to use the food. Think of quinoa: Once upon a time it was unknown outside of its native Andean highlands; now it’s whipped up in suburban homes around the world. Sorghum might just be the latest example of how PR can help change the way the world eats, if they can crack the code on making it sound appealing, approachable and healthy.
Milo is a way cooler name though. Just saying.
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Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.