Anton Savage: Momentum is a cruel political mistress, as Sinn Féin is finding out

Originally published in the Business Post.

In politics, just like in business, momentum matters. Unfortunately, in both spheres it’s difficult to generate, predict and maintain. Just ask Mary Lou MacDonald, Joe Biden or Arthur Cranfield the Third.

In 1971, Arthur Cranfield the Third was pudgy. He didn’t like being pudgy, so he set about shedding a few pounds. Which was particularly challenging as he wanted to do it without giving up his favourite dessert - chocolate fudge.

For most people that square would never be circled; if the fudge stays, so does the extra poundage. But the deck was stacked in favour of Arthur; he was the CEO of Cranfield’s, the Chicago soft drink company founded by his grandfather (the first Arthur Cranfield).

Arthur 3 went to his chief chemist, handed him a box of chocolate fudge and said “make me a liquid version of this, but make it calorie free”. Six months later Cranfield’s Diet Chocolate Fudge Soda was born. It slaked Arthur’s desire for pudding and gave Cranfield a new product line to put on shelves, though few bought it, probably due it to tasting precisely as horrendous as you might imagine a 1970s fizzy, entirely artificial diet fudge soda would.

But not everyone has good taste. And in 1985, the Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene proved himself among those devoid of functioning taste buds when he wrote a column praising Cranfield’s “rich and chocolatey” flavour, which he said was “like biting into a hot fudge sundae”. Trust me, I’ve had it. It’s not.

But Bob’s column started a ball rolling, and a product that had been largely dormant for a decade and a half suddenly grew momentum. Cranfield’s almost went cash flow bankrupt trying to meet the new production demands - sales leapt from 60,000 a year, to 20,000 a week.

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