Saturday, February 8, 2014

Marketing 101: Don't use cake in your marketing unless your product is cake.

So on the side of my Cheerios box there's a panel that says, "Treat yourself to a better night time snack." And it's got a picture of a delicious-looking piece of cake made out of Cheerios. And I'm thinking, "Holy crap, it's like a Rice Krispies treat, but cake, and made out of multiple flavors of Cheerios. I am so in." Only then I look and see that there's no recipe, and slowly it dawns on me that Cheerios has deliberately made me want cake, suggested that there could be cake made out of Cheerios, and then offered me Cheerios straight out of the box instead. 

Screw you, Cheerios, you bunch of malevolent sadists.


(And before anybody goes into comments and points out the Cheerios ad about the interracial couple and their adorable child in order to make me feel bad about calling them malevolent sadists, I already feel bad about it ... just not bad enough that I no longer want Cheerios cake. Also, don't post any links to that "Cheerios cake" monstrosity on the Betty Crocker site. I'm sure it's up to Betty Crocker's normal standards of taste, but if we're being honest here, it looks like somebody threw up Cheerios in a bundt cake pan.)