« January 2003 | February 2003 | March 2003 »
Building on the menacing words on the back of the All-Month Breakfast box from yesterday’s post (”I know what I like, and I like a lot of it”), here are a couple more assertive pronouncements of preference:
“I know What I Like and I Like FRITOS™ brand Corn Chips.” A Proud Tagline Since 1993. Frito has decided that the best way to entice you to eat their corn chips is to hypnotize you into it:
When you need a snack to fill up those empty spaces, nothing satisfies like a hearty helping of FRITOS™ brand Corn Chips. Crunch into FRITOS™ Corn Chips and savor their delicious corn flavor [note: not corn, but "corn flavor"] and bold texture, chip after chip. It’s the taste you’ve been craving. So grab your bag of FRITOS™ Corn Chips and treat yourself right. After all, you know what you like.
Yesterday we dissected Swanson’s new Hungry-Man tagline–”It’s Good to be Full”–and here comes Fritos to the rescue “when you need a snack to fill up those empty spaces.”
“…but I know what I like!” Monty Python: Michelangelo and the Pope concludes with the same old chestnut:
Pope: There was only one Redeemer!
Michelangelo: Ah, I know that, we all know that, what about a bit of artistic license?
Pope: Well one Messiah is what I want!
Michelangelo: I’ll tell you what you want, mate! You want a bloody photographer! That’s you want. Not a bloody creative artist to crease you up…
Pope: I’ll tell you what I want! I want a last supper with one Christ, twelve disciples, no kangaroos, no trampoline acts, by Thursday lunch, or you don’t get paid!
Michelangelo: Bloody fascist!
Pope: Look! I’m the bloody pope, I am! May not know much about art, but I know what I like!
Here is a great article deconstructing what is perhaps the single most deadly processed microwave “meal” ever to grace supermarket shelves, the Swanson Hungry-Man All Day Breakfast, which at least is partial Truth In Product Naming.
The All-Month Breakfast would be more like it. The front of its packing crate boldly shouts, “OVER 1LB. OF FOOD,” while the back of the box features a bulky, high-cholesterol male pointing threateningly at the viewer, along with this menacing quotation: “I know what I like, and I like a lot of it.” This is not subtle branding. There’s no Alice Waters making culinary magic from the freshest organic ingredients over at the Swanson plant. No, this is food as a weapon, as a threat: I will eat this stuff, and nobody’s gonna’ stop me, I will eat and eat and eat until I explode and take other people out with me. Or at least do my part in destroying the American healthcare system.
Get a load of the “nutritional” information of this beast: 1,030 calories, 570 from fat; 64 grams of fat (98% of your daily dose); 2,090 milligrams of sodium (87%); and a whopping 690 milligrams of cholesterol, or 231% of the upper-limit any sane person would consume in an entire day, all in one meal!
The article is accompanied by a bunch of gruesome product shots. In fact, the writer, “Matt,” offers this disclaimer: “Be warned, the pictures are of a graphic nature.” If you’re up to the challenge, read the article. Then write your congressperson–perhaps we can get a U.N. Resolution against this terror, and save thousands of lives before it’s too late.
“It’s Good to be Full”: fearing the above was merely the tip of the clogged artery, we dug up this Refrigerated & Frozen Foods magazine article [PDF] that goes into great detail about how Pinnacle Foods bought and resuscitated the dying Swanson brand, and a large part of the success has been the Hungry-Man line, where every meal was enlarged to “a full pound of food” or more.
So what does today’s hungry man eat for dinner, after the staying power of the All-Day Breakfast has run it’s course? Why, an “XXL” dinner of course (got to hand it to ‘em, even more truth in advertising here):
If bigger is better, then XXL must be stupendous. The new Hungry-Man XXL dinners, now shouldering their way into supermarkets, feature a pound and a half of food. The Backyard Barbecue offers two glazed chicken breasts, two barbecued pork ribs and a mountain of mashed potatoes….At a suggested retail price of $4.79, it will be regularly promoted.
This giant leap into bigger meals was not based on whim, however.
“We followed men around and talked to them in focus groups” explains [Andy] Reichgut [senior Hungry-Man business manager]. “Conducting focus groups with men is fun. They didn’t really want to talk to one another, except maybe about a ball game. Then we brought out the food. When they saw the XXL Backyard Barbecue their eyes lit up and they started talking to one another about the product. We could tell just by their reactions which meals were the right ones [to market].
“Our new tag line, ‘It’s Good to be Full,’ reinforces why men love Hungry-Man. And it resonates unbelievably well with consumers.”
It should be noted that since Pinnacle’s marketing makeover of the Swanson brand, sales of the Hungry-Man family have increased along with customer waistlines, by a whopping 20 percent.
Perhaps it is good to be full (beats starvation), but full of what? Sure, Swanson is bucking the growing trend of healthier eating, and marketing only to the insane, but hey, that’s still like, what, 55 million Americans? Not a bad niche business.
Faux grass gets creamed: Thirty-eight years after pioneering the industry in which it is still the leader, the AstroTurf brand is hanging up its cleats.
The most famous name in the artificial surface market eventually will be phased out as Leander [Texas]-based Southwest Recreational Industries Inc. folds six companies and 51 brands of various products into a single company called SRI Sports Inc.
This is an amazingly brash decision, to take a brand that is not only well-known, but has become a generic name to describe any artificial turf product, a la Kleenex or Xerox, and to just–POOF–delete it. And not only eliminate it, but to subsume the product and all others under the less-than-inspiring moniker SRI Sports Inc.
“This has been on our minds for the last couple of years, the idea that we wanted to clean up the image of the company and make things simpler for our customers,” says Reed Seaton, president and CEO of Southwest.
“There actually have been cases where people would buy an indoor floor from us and be out looking for a football field–without even recognizing that we’re the biggest manufacturer of artificial turf fields in the business. It’s time to end the confusion and plant one flag on our products.”
Huh? We can’t even follow the logic of that argument. Consumers go in to buy a floor from them, and then announce that they have to go look elsewhere to buy a football field? How about a used bridge while they’re at it?
“This is a bold move, a really bold move,” says Mark Nicholls, president of Fonthill, Canada-based Sportexe, one of SRI’s competitors. “I’m not sure if they’re doing the right thing, but it takes a lot of guts to be sitting at the top of the heap and turn your back on the AstroTurf name that has been such a signature in the industry. They must feel that with all the new technology and so much development and improvement in artificial turf surfaces, being considered just the ‘AstroTurf company’ had become a negative thing.”
Perhaps, but you’d think the name could be saved and used just for the artificial sports turf brand. Talk about killing the messenger. If people are not aware that the company is about so much more than AstroTurf, perhaps the company could do more to brand itself, rather than kill off its most highly visible and recognizable brand.
SRI’s President Seaton denies the company is turning its back on its own history: “We’re proud of AstroTurf.–But eventually there can become so many things out there that it’s just too confusing to customers, and they’re the people that matter,” he says.
Yes, Mr. Seaton, the landscape of artificial turf is confusing, and one look at the names of some turf products and companies should make it clear why:
1st Turf, CamTurf, ClubTurf, Durraturf, EZfield, Field Turf, Forever Green, Gras, Grasmere, Grass Tex, Instant Turf, KonyGreen, Lectron, MasterTurf, Nova Grass, Omniturf, PoliGras, ProGreen, Ryturf, SafePlay TURF, SmartGrass, SprinTurf, Tartan Turf, Thiolon Grass, TourTurf, Wyco Turf,…∞
Sure, most of these copy the AstroTurf name structure, obviously trying to suck customers away from the leader. But how effective will the top-selling artificial turf brand be once it is given a bland name like SRIgras and thrown into the abyss with the names above? Our prediction: everyone will keep calling any artificial turf “AstroTurf,” but the actual product that used to go by that name will command an ever-shrinking piece of the market.
Ford’s Focused Favorites: We all know that Ford has been enamored with “E” names for its SUVs–Explorer, Excursion, Escape and Expedition. Hot on the heels of that successful “strategy,” Ford has now gone native, and is naming nearly every non-SUV vehicle in sight an F-word, according to a snarky story rolling down from Canada.
Ford is rumored to be renaming its Windstar minivan, giving it the name Freestar, not to be confused with the Freestyle, coming out next year. Also joining the fleet of Fiestas, Focuses and Futuras next year will be the Five Hundred sedan, and in Europe Ford recently launched the Fusion, a derivative of the Fiesta.
“It’s part of a strategy to establish some consistency in brand names. . . that really ties back very well to a lot of the names that Ford used in the past that began with an F….”
Ahh, “consistency,” that signifier of daring and excitement. But making the brand subservient to such arbitrary rules, alas, is not the wisest course.
The madness continues with this old chestnut of rationalization, the F-group:
Ford says F-words tested particularly well with focus groups. Such names do double-duty by bolstering the Ford brand, Mr. [Tony] Galida [vice-president of general marketing at Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. in Oakville] says.
That’s especially important today, when advertising budgets are tight and dozens of car brands are fighting for market share.
No word yet if these were the same focus groups that rubber-stamped the brilliance of the woebegone Chrysler K-car.
Launching a new model “can be a very difficult and time-consuming process, so putting a framework around it that makes sense and ties closely with your primary brand is something that we think will help us,” he says.
It’s a cop-out, a short cut endorsed by focus groups that can only hurt them in the long run. This strategy leads not only to model confusion, but to a general lack of individualization at a time when many cars are trying to stand out from the crowd by becoming ever more specialized. Ford may think that these sound-alike F-names will help conserve advertising budgets, but what’s more likely is that more money will be spent in the attempt to differentiate models whose names all scream, “We’re all alike.”
Jennifer Bishop has created the wonderful Starbucks Oracle, posted on her site Buttafly (a winning name–”crass, yet elegant,” says one of our very own “experts”). As Bishop defines the Oracle,
Astrology is lame and Myers-Briggs is for losers. The omniscient Oracle of Starbucks can tell you everything about your personality by what you drink at Starbucks. Simply enter your full drink order–including size–into the field below and the all-knowing Oracle will tell you everything about your personality. Better yet, input your friends’ orders to find out what they’re really like.
Best of all, “Unlike other imitations, the Oracle is 100% accurate.” Sure enough, this groggy blogger’s Oracle stated without reservation, “You probably live in California.” Thwack! Ouch, that stung.
networksolutionsisanoxymoron.com: Sometimes in the cheery Eden of branding a little rain must fall. Today’s foul weather report is brought to you by Network Solutions, the company that everyone loved to hate so much that they changed their name to the antiseptic “Netsol.”
Apparently hoping that the storm had passed, Netsol recently changed their name back to the despised Network Solutions. Clearly both names stink, but we’d like to focus on the actual words, “network” and “solutions.” These are two words that have been so overused that they have sunk below white noise status and now have negative connotations.
Do your company a favor: If the word “solutions” appears anywhere on your website or is otherwise associated with your endeavor, MAKE IT STOP. Do you offer a
If you have a “solution,” then you have a problem. In which case, you are in need of a solution solution.
“You know, the size of protests is like deciding, well, I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group,” said President Bush, when asked about his reaction to last weekend’s mass anti-war protests around the world. “The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security — in this case, the security of the people.”
Oddly enough, Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, reacting to criticism over the duct tape/plastic sheeting madness of last week, explained that the recommendation to stock up on the useless items was the result of extensive focus group testing.
A focus group, for those of you still blissfully unaware, is where a bunch of people who desperately want others to listen to them are placed in a sterile environment and asked leading questions. These sessions are promoted as scientific by those that run them and are often employed by large organizations who are uneasy and unsure in their dealings with human beings. Such organizations are more comfortable “letting science decide” what to say and how to say it.
Of course, “science” has a tin ear, and is wont to answer sincere personal questions about protecting one’s family by belching out phrases like “duct tape and plastic sheeting.”
« January 2003 | Home | March 2003 »
