You Can't Have My Potatoes

How do you feed a starving nation that doesn't want to know? You change their perceptions.

Back in 18th Century Prussia, a crisis was brewing. Bread prices were soaring, famine was spreading, and the nation was starving. King Frederick the Great needed a solution, fast.

His answer? Potatoes.

Who doesn't love a potato? boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew, nutrient rich, easy to grow and abundant, potatoes seemed like the perfect fix. But there was one problem, the population wasn’t too keen on them. They saw them as dirty. Tasteless and for some reason...untrustworthy.

So King Frederick took them away, said “you can’t have it”. He had the potatoes planted in his royal garden and surrounded the crop with guards.

That’s when word spread.

“If its under royal protection, it must be valuable”

“What’s growing in the royal garden…?”

The guards were told to turn a blind eye and be a bit lenient, and it wasn’t long before all peasants were jumping the royal hedge, nicking the potatoes and planting them in their own gardens.

What King Frederick had engineered was one history's earliest, and most effective rebrands.

He hadn’t changed the product, he changed the perception. By assigning the potato as sense of prestige and limiting its availability, he tapped into two powerful psychological principles:

Perception of Value: People assumed it was worth more because it appeared exclusive

Scarcity Bias: When something is limited or forbidden, our desire for it intensifies.

In short, Frederick didn’t need to advertise the potato, he let human psychology do the work.

Although the actual value of a product or offer doesn't change, limiting the supply of it works to persuade people the product has a higher value, creating a higher demand for it.