Nobel Prize for Marketing Awarded to Guy Who Got Everyone to Buy Those Walking Pole Things

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The Nobel Prize in Marketing was awarded today to Dennis DeYoung, a product manager who discovered a way to convince untold thousands of pedestrians to purchase handheld poles to use while walking.

“For decades, conventional wisdom held that the market for walking accessories was tapped out,” James Vincent Young, the chair of the Academy’s Nobel committee for marketing, said in a video announcement. “Once they have a good pair of shoes and insoles, plus maybe a music player of some sort and a hat or visor, what else could a walker possibly need?”

“This year’s Nobel laureate in marketing,” Young continued, “set to work on that problem, and answered it in a way that can only be described as genius.”

DeYoung, 52, said he was asleep when he got the call from the Nobel committee, and at first assumed it was a joke.

“I was, like, ‘Huh?’” he said in an interview with Dumb Runner. “I figured it was a friend messing with me.”

DeYoung, who called the award “surprising and an incredible honor,” had been trying for years to discover a way to sell walkers more stuff, he said. The breakthrough came early this year, while “clowning around” with some colleagues after a late night in the office.

“Our space is filled with sports equipment of all kinds,” he said. “So at one point, when I excused myself to use the restroom, I grabbed some ski poles leaning in a corner and used them as I clomped out of the room.”

“That’s when the lightbulb went off.”

Within days, DeYoung had crafted a marketing plan to promote the use of “trekking poles” to everyday walkers; within months, sales of the gear had exploded.

Just a few years ago, the Nobel committee noted, it was rare to spot someone using trekking poles outside of hiking trails; today, they’re ubiquitous, even on paved paths and in suburban neighborhoods.

“No one thought it was possible to sell walkers more stuff,” the Nobel committee said, “but Mr. DeYoung found a way. The gear industry owes him a debt.”