Remembering Joseph Pedott, the man behind Chia Pets and The Clapper

Joseph Pedott, the man behind the Chia Pet, The Clapper and ad jingles that will remain forever etched in the collective consciousness as earworms, has died at age 91.

The Clapper, which turns lights and appliances off with the clap of a hand, was a mid-1980s precursor of countless smart home devices. And the Chia Pet, now in hundreds of iterations, continues to sell at least half a million units annually worldwide, according to Michael Hirsch, Pedott’s longtime business partner and VP of the San Francisco-based Joseph Pedott Advertising and Marketing. Hirsch continues to work at the agency, which also handles outside clients, though it was sold in 2018 along with the product company Joseph Enterprises to collectibles marketer NECA.

Pedott was a “depression baby,” as Hirsch describes him. Born in 1932, Pedott grew up with “a very aggressive father,” he told Ad Age in 2019, and left home when he was 16 and lived in a YMCA for three years eating off a hot plate.

Ultimately, however, he worked his way to a degree from the University of Illinois. But he never forgot his roots or his early struggles, and as a result set up four charitable foundations, including one in San Francisco and three in Chicago, to help underprivileged kids get into and pay for college.

Because of his origins, Pedott was never one for lavish spending. Hirsch recalls traveling with him around the country on sales calls to retailers and sharing rooms at Holiday Inns.

“In the morning, I would wake up and there would be a whole lot of socks drying that he had washed the night before in the hotel room,” Hirsch said. “He would at night be throwing thoughts to me about different things, different products, different ideas. Many of them were hits. He was training me. He was my mentor.”

While Chia Pets and the Clapper get lumped in with direct-response TV classics like the Veg-O-Matic in many people’s minds, Pedott was never a direct-response marketer.

“We needed to sell the products in stores in order to pay for the TV,” Hirsch said. As a result, Pedott was negotiating face-to-face deals with local TV stations and groups as he made the rounds selling to retailers.

“He was legendary at his negotiations with TV stations with a smile,” he said. “He’s known in a hundred markets, and he really had friends at many TV stations in their sales departments.”

The emphasis was on fairness, Hirsch said. “He was a very honest person. And if he didn’t want to tell you something that was negative, he would just say, ‘I don’t want to lie to you. It’s none of your business.’”

Pedott’s relationship-building proved lucrative. Those retailers he was selling to proved crucial to spawning some of his biggest products.

An executive of the former Los Angeles-based Thrifty Drug chain originally owned and introduced Pedott to the Chia Pet, which he hadn’t been able to get off the ground himself, but which Pedott bought eagerly and built into a legend, Hirsch said. Another one of Pedott’s hits, The Pumpkin Cutter, came on a tip from an executive of Perry Drug Stores in Michigan who saw potential in the product but couldn’t get it to sell in stores.

For Hirsch, the biggest thing he learned from Pedott may not be revolutionary, but always worked.

“He always wanted to make sure the product has value and is competitively priced, that the ad showed the attributes but didn’t over-exaggerate them,” Hisch said. “If you do that, your customers will be happy, and they will come back. I always remembered that.”