Lagniappe, a Cajun word from New Orleans: a small gift, a bonus, a little something extra, that grows out of generosity and a basic sense of good business.
Monetize, a modern use of an old concept, turning into money something that has value or is thought to have value.
From the bazaars to farm markets, lagniappe has been part of the deal: the seller ensures a repeat customer, the customer remembers the seller’s generosity. A bond is formed. In the 1930s and ‘40s this bond helped manufacturers and customer weather the shortages with industry wide lagniappes.
Flour was sold in cotton sacks that millers knew poor women used to make clothing. The Kansas Wheat Company began using flowered, striped, patterned cotton for the sacks. The claim was to bring a little color into lives, and it was good business.
Laundry soap, sold in large cardboard boxes, added cups, saucers, bowls, varieties of what today we treasure as Fiesta ware. The brand Duz introduced Golden Wheat dinnerware—and Duz Does it Better introduced children (this one, I know) to the magic and mystery of words that sound the same but aren’t the same in spelling or meaning.
The round Quaker Oats boxes contained Depression Glass. Kellogg’s became a kid favorite with prizes: small toys, comic books, decoder rings, spy equipment and more by collecting box tops and sending them to a secret address.
These lagniappes helped the spirit and the pocketbook during the depression years and perfected a reality: the “little extra” can be just as important as the item itself… or maybe even more important. You will feel better, richer, more beautiful, more hip, as a result of buying X product. X cosmetics will help you look like someone else. During my smoking years I smoked Benson & Hedges for no reason other than that I liked the package—I could, and did, feel elegant when I bought and smoked them.
Today, I think, the lagniappe is more valued than the thing itself. We buy the lagniappe and get the item thrown in. “The more you spend, the more you save,” cash back plans, frequent flyer miles, a sweatshirt with an NFL logo, July’s siren calls of “on sale” whether we need or not, the word “natural,” celebrity endorsement where we get reflected approval but certainly not the celebrity —we buy for that extra,
That extra alone can be monetized: a certain name printed on hotels, bibles, tennis shoes, copies of the Constitution, red fertilizer caps, products branded and sold for the name. The image: a 79-year-old man dressed in a sagging blue suit, a sagging white shirt, the president of this country slouching along under heavily sprayed hair and a red cap that awakens every parental and grandparental admonition, “He needs to take off that stupid cap!”
The feed mills sold fertilizers that recognized the value of the lagniappe, the customer a farmer who worked the fields, sun and rain. The extra, a cap decorated with the company logo. Farmers wore them in the fields and elsewhere, but not indoors and never as a dress-up accessory.
Trump’s interest is money, of course, the value, the monetization of that silly cap. Maybe future presidents will take up the image in homage to his reign. Maybe that little extra will have us remember his image just as we remember Kennedy’s black high hats, or Queen Elizabeth’s purses, or General Eisenhower’s battle jacket. I see another fertilizer cap above the flabby face of a failed politician, the 13th donut that tastes even worse than the tasteless dozen.
Marie Howard