I don’t know why I love this commercial so much. Frankly, I’d rather have the Toaster car. Good jamz, though.
Category Archives: Marketing
KFC Has Balls of Fat
Thanks to one of my faithful readers for giving me a heads up on this new delicacy from KFC. May I introduce you to the KFC Double Down: Bacon, cheese, special sauce with two pieces of fried chicken as the “bun.” There is literally not one ingredient in this so-called sandwich that isn’t heart-stopping in it’s pure fatiness. It’s basically squares of fat, with strips of fat, with a sauce of fat between two proteins dipped in fat and fried…. in fat.
I have to applaud KFC for having the balls to introduce this monstrosity in this day and age of White House vegetable gardens and british chefs telling us we eat crap. It’s like KFC just gave a big fried chicken finger to all the tofu-lovin’ organic-buyin’ tree-huggin’ namby-pamby big brother liberal crybabies out there. America, fuck yeah!
Not sure it’s good marketing move to kill your demographic, though.
The Double Down will be available April 12. Cardiologists everywhere prepare to double down on business.
McDonald’s Makes the Crappy Shamrock Shake More Crappy
Full disclosure: I hate the Shamrock Shake – always have. It has two things in this world that I can’t stand: ice cream and mint. (Well, ice cream is a relative term, as I believe the shakes at McDonald’s have never had ice cream within 100 miles of them… but I digress.) The only thing I hate at McDonald’s more than the Shamrock Shake is the McRib. But, the fact that I hate the Shamrock Shake has nothing to do with my complaint about it.
Why is is so difficult for the marketing geniuses at McDonald’s to understand that people don’t want you to fuck with their food? Am I the only one who gets that the reason people go to McDonald’s is because of the consistency of the product line? You want to have the same crappy Quarter Pounder that you had when you were 16 – – it’s a comfort thing, not a quality thing. I’m no corporate marketeer any more, but I’m willing to bet that 90% of McDonald’s sales are the same core products: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, Quarter Pounders & Big Macs. (Maybe throw Chicken McNuggets in there somewhere, as it was probably the last food introduction that the American public embraced with any enthusiasm – in 1980 – and I’m sure most of those sold are to kids.) It’s fairly obvious that we don’t want to go to McDonalds and have salads, burritos, pizza, soup, sloppy joes or filet mignon.
So, it is in this vein that I was incredulous when I saw the recent ads touting the yearly return of the Shamrock Shake, only to see that they added whipped cream and a cherry to it! WTF? It’s not a fucking Starbucks latte! And, for some reason, the boneheads at McDonald’s have seemed to forgotten that people are very, very attached to this crappy product. Hell, before the internet, they had snail mail fan clubs for the Shamrock Shake complete with t-shirts and newsletters. I have a feeling that fucking with the Shamrock Shake is not going to go over well with Shamrock Shake enthusiasts. I haven’t seen much about it yet, as I think they just returned (to Chicago anyway) this week. But, again, McDonald’s doesn’t seem to get that they should just keep churning out the same old shit and we’ll be happy.
Don’t fuck with the Shamrock Shake!!!! You have been warned.
The Art & Science of Title Sequences
I am a year behind on watching Dexter (SO FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS AT THE END OF SEASON 4!) and have been watching Season 3 on DVD from Netflix for the past few weeks. I have always been interested in title sequences, so I was trying to figure out who did the freaky title sequence for Dexter and found this neat little site that has little tidbits about a bunch of them. Fun thing to check out if you want to waste some time.
Especially cool are ones I kind of forgot about: Edward Scissorhands, Carnivàle, To Kill a Mockingbird, Resevoir Dogs and Thank you for Smoking.
Visit theartofthetitle.com.
PS – Is it me, or does Dexter look like Brett Favre?
Worst Commercial Photoshop Ever
I’m definitely not a Photoshop expert, but even if I tried I could not pull off this disaster – found on the package for the Wii game Pet Vet. I am shocked that this would even make it out of a DeVry Photoshop I class – let alone on to a real actual product.
I don’t know what’s worse: the freakishly giant rabbit? The phony orange cat who’s not even in the same state? The fake hair on the Miley Cyrus look-alike? (or, my favorite line from the Photoshop Disaster site this came from, “the horse with Hitler’s haircut?”)
I’ve seen a lot of bad Photoshop from people who don’t know what they’re doing and I’ve seen some really bad Photoshop from people who think they know what they’re doing – but I’ve never seen this bad of Photoshop from someone who is supposed to know what they’re doing!
Two words: This sucks.
The End of Gourmet Magazine
This is a sad say in the culinary world. Gourmet Magazine, the oldest cooking publication in they United States is folding. Condé Nast chopped the mag in a cost-cutting move along with three other titles. They only have two cooking titles, Gourmet and Bon Appétit, and they chose to keep BA over Gourmet. Of course, I get them both, along with Food & Wine and Saveur, but Gourmet has always been my favorite.
The magazine was published since December, 1940. The move comes as somewhat a surprise to foodies, as the Gourmet title has prestige. Or it did, anyway. Another example of mediocrity over substance in my opinion.
Two Words: You. Wish.
Behold the Beautiful “Meat Star Platter!”
I’m not exactly sure what year this ad ran, but it fits right in with my unheralded obsession with all Disgusting Food Images from the Past. I especially enjoy the crazy flaming sterno in the middle of the star! According to the copy, your guests are supposed to roast the little Vienna Sausages over the sterno! Mmmm.. I can’t imagine how yummy that must taste. Vienna Sausages + Sterno = Instant Glamour.
The other two cat food appetizers are Deviled Ham and Potted Food Meat Product spread on crackers. Now, I’m no marketing genius, but couldn’t they have come up with a better name than “Potted Food Meat Product?” You don’t see them calling Spam “Chopped-Pork-Shoulder-Meat-with-Ham-Meat-Added Product” now do you?
I’m sure they could sell more of it if they called it PoFo or something. It’s still called that today, believe it or not. And, even more disturbing is that there are not one, not two, but three different brands of Potted Food Meat Product. Armour brand claims to be #1 in the Potted Food Meat Product category. Why would you brag about this? And, more importantly, who the hell is buying this stuff? Vienna Sausages, Deviled Ham – it’s all equally disgusting.
(I had a friend in college who loooooved Vienna Sausages and used to eat them can after can. The only thing I could ever figure out is that he was stoned about 95% of the time, so maybe that had something to do with it. To me, they look like little poached fingers in a can, so high or not, I can’t bring myself to try them.)
Oh, by the way, here is the ingredient list to Potted Food Meat Product: Beef tripe, mechanically separated chicken, beef hearts, partially defatted cooked beef fatty tissue, meat broth, vinegar, salt, flavoring, sugar, and sodium nitrite.
IKEA and Verdana-gate
Only a total nerd like me would find this utterly fascinating, but IKEA stepped into a small shitstorm this week with the release of their ubiquitous 2010 catalog by changing their signature typeface of Futura over to *gasp* – Verdana. (For those of you who aren’t typeface dorks, this is analogous in the design world to giving up your Christian Louboutins for a pair of Uggs.)
It’s more than just a font change – it’s an image change. IKEA, for better or worse, is known for sleek and simple design philosophy and their choice of font for the past 50 years consciously and unconsciously reflected that. (In fact, the company was so entwined with the font, that they had a proprietary version created for them – called Ikea Sans.)
Fast forward to now and IKEA decides to dump its customized Futura for the ungodly choice of Verdana. Verdana, a Microsoft-created font, is probably what you see when you read 85% of web sites out there – as it should be as this is why it was created in the first place – to be read on your computer monitor. It is not, however, a good typeface for print work, such as for oh, say – catalogs. Considering the IKEA catalog prints more copies than the Bible or Harry Potter each year, this seems a bit of a bonehead move. There is no elegance to this hideous font in print.
IKEA seems to be officially poo-pooing the contoversy, saying basically that no one outside the design industry cares about this issue. But, you don’t have to be in the design industry to unconsciously infer that a font is ugly or a design isn’t working, and ultimately this will reflect on the brand. It will be interesting to see if Verdana returns in 2011 – a number that looks great in Futura, by the way.
Oh, and Comic Sans is a fucking ugly-ass font that also happens to be from Microsoft. So ugly, in fact, that there is a group that wants to make it illegal to use.
Hey! What the hell happened to this?
Yeah, I know – we have computers now. But this ad is from the early 70s – so where was my Picturephone® when I was in high school?
Oh, and while we’re on the subject – where the hell is my flying rocket car?
nachounderpants.com 