Butter Me Silly

Trey Smith

Paula Deen, the Southern belle of butter and heavy cream, makes no apologies for waiting three years to disclose she has diabetes while continuing to dish up deep-fried cheesecake and other high-calorie, high-fat recipes on TV.

She said she isn't changing the comfort cooking that made her a star, though it isn't clear how much of it she'll continue to eat while she promotes health-conscious recipes along with a diabetes drug she's endorsing for a Danish company.

"I've always said, 'Practice moderation, y'all.' I'll probably say that a little louder now," Deen said Tuesday after revealing her diagnosis on NBC's "Today" show. "You can have diabetes and have a piece of cake. You cannot have diabetes and eat a whole cake."

Health activists and one fellow chef called her a hypocrite for promoting an unhealthy diet along with a drug to treat its likely effects.
~ from Chef Paula Deen Hid Diabetes, Pushed High-Fat Food via National Public Radio ~

Would I consider Deen to be a hypocrite? Probably so, but I think this "situation" is more complicated than that. From my perspective, this is all about branding.

Paula Deen has become a brand name. This brand name is built upon pushing fat-laden, blood vessel-clogging and obesity-promoting food. Advertisers and viewers have flocked to this brand image and, as a result, Team Paula Deen has made oodles of money.

A good businessperson knows that you don't mess with a brand name that is readily accepted and successful. Remember a few years back when Coca-Cola messed with the formula of their popular soft drink? They ended up losing a significant portion of their market share and, eventually, backtracked.

So, when Paula Deen discovered that her dietary scheme, among other factors, had resulted in her being diagnosed with diabetes, her success at marketing herself as a brand name made the decision to come clean very troublesome. How do you turn around to say, "Hey folks, you know the diet ideas I've been pushing on you for the last decade aren't very healthful?" without losing a significant chunk of your market share?

The answer is that you don't and so you keep quiet! When the truth finally comes out, a lot of people will label you a hypocrite, but you won't lose too much sleep over that because you were able to keep the all important brand name intact for a good while which made you and a lot of other people very wealthy.