I remember watching a Louie Theroux show about a ‘charm teacher’ and how he could teach you how to seduce a wench without having to bash her on the head with a wrench. The wench wrench in fact.
Given my natural charm and a lack of wrenches, the only thing I learnt was about the use of ‘oronyms‘; the way of saying one thing which can be subliminally (or not) heard as something else. A bit classier than the Robin Van Persie classic “No” means “Yes”, he taught Louie the more subtle and less statutory examples over the 40 min program stretched for an hour.
He started with the classic…
“Have you considered this new direction”
“I have hair in the wrong places”
and then moved swiftly on to
“What about this position, [pause], below me”
fi dollar?
“Sweet jesus - we’ve got 30 people trapped in debris”
34 cheese related deaths last year including 2 drownings in vats of Laughing Cow.
“I really need to see Hotblack Dixon”
On what? On toast?
“And behold - Sauron’s penetrating gaze!”
Is he? I thought that was Sam with Frodo
A Tolkien Black
We all love New directions. New is the new old. Classic is the old New. Old is the classic new. When Coke released New Coke in the mid 80’s people got in a right fizzy tizzy - especially the Southerners who loved Coca-Cola so much they referred to all soft drinks as ‘coke’.
“What’s that? Hamburger. And this? Hamburger. Orange hamburger.”
How did it go so wrong? Pepsi had proved that Taste is everything and consumer tests proved that Coke’s comeback kid, New Coke, tasted better - but the people were revolting. 77 days later Coke capitulated, consoled consumers and came out with Coke Classic - leaving New Coke to slowly wind down, ending up off the shelves in US by 1998. (It is still being sold on Yap, one of the four Federated States of Micronesia, if you do want to try it).
Yet the most telling thing was the statement by Coca Cola CMO, Sergio Zyman, years later…
“New Coke was a success because it revitalized the brand and reattached the public to Coke”
“I love Black Coke”
Coke proved that if you change a beloved product (either name or taste) as an act of ‘corporate reblanding’, receive a Daily Mail incited public outcry and then surrender lamely to pressure like Gallas’n'Toure, everyone is a winner. Since New Coke, in the UK alone, we’ve had the Choco-Krispies debacle of ‘98 and more recently the Pasta Hut madness of summer ‘08.
In ‘98 Kelloggs changed the cereal Coco Pops to Choco Krispies and the public went ape. I feel sorry for poor Kelloggs - submitting their $50m investment in repackaging and brand repositioning to the public vote; at the end of the affair they could have rebranded it originally to PooPoo Plops given the impact it had. Everyone was talking about it and passionately arguing the case for the reversion to Coco Pops. “The song doesn’t work any more”, “they aren’t crispy, more sort of..pop-py”, “the EU is putting a unwanted H into Coco”, “I like monkeys”.
“I’d rather have a bowl of PooPoo Plops”
And now we have Pizza Hut pointlessly rebranding all their stores as Pasta Hut. They should’ve just renamed themselves Panama Hat, (their logo is a hat to start with) and started selling high-class headwear and the all-you-can-eat plastic cheese’n'dough suicide bombs. You even go to their website and they have a online poll to decide if the name stays - so deliberate it hurts my cheese filled arteries. Ultimately the longer it stays as Pasta Hut, it means the less people care about them, and therefore the more likely their Ad Agency will be back on the streets turning tricks by Christmas.
You can also see their ‘rebranding’ happening even in politics. Zyman from Coke always saw the Presidential Election as the ultimate marketing campaign. I’m sure McCain was rubbing his hands when Obama selected Biden as his running mate. Obama / Biden….Osama Biden…Osama Bin Laden. Let’s rebrand the black guy in people’s heads - look he has a bomb on him right now.
Wheelie Bin Laden. With stuff that should be recycled.
Position. Reposition. Position. Internet poll. Win. Lose. Repeat. In the end we are the wheelie bin laden with marketing messages and brand positionings. We have no choices - Coke is it. Obey your thirst. Tall, Grande, Venti. Blah Blah Blah. Milk is now CowJuice Lite. Blah. You are our core demographic for ‘09. That Class AA core demographic of douchebag assholes with no taste but eager brains who can be convinced that their earning power gives them choice but in fact they never had any in the first place and all their purchases are being controlled by every bigger a-holes in the marketing department for Harpers and Queen and GQ magazine. That same demographic who are all collectively married to the Alien Queen of Sheba hive-mind demanding bigger, greener lawns, more LV purses dammit and skimmed panda milk in their lattes for breakfast.
On that note - anyone For Coffee?
-y
and PS
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They ain’t frequent, but they’re whoppers, your posts!
Good times.