Category: advertising

Supermarket finds: lolbananas

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LOLbananas

If there’s one complaint I’ve always had with fruit, it’s that it just isn’t interactive enough. I mean, it just sits there on the counter for a day or two and then gets eaten. How boring is that? It’s so old fashioned. If only, I’ve frequently thought, my fruit not only nourished me, but entertained me too. My attention span has gotten so short that I can barely take one or two bites of even the best fruit before I drop it and go searching for some shiny baubles.

Chiquita to the rescue! With three simple letters and a domain name emblazoned across the label, they’ve put the URI back in fruit. This banana is my key to the fun and gut-busting laughter that I’ve always wanted fruit to provide. So it was with great joy and anticipation that I sat down with my banana and aimed my browser squarely at eatachiquita.com. Sadly, there was not a single LOL to be found on the site. I couldn’t even find a snort, smirk, or meh. I guess I’ll have to stick with lolcats for my daily lulz.

I still don’t get how this is supposed to encourage me to eat more bananas in general, never mind Chiquita bananas specifically. My local supermarket doesn’t get it either: two days after I bought this bunch, all of the Chiquita bananas in the store had been replaced by Del Montes.

My search for a complete fruit experience continues.

You say you want a revolution

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The Boxed Meat Revolution

Furthermore, the sign on the front of the store in Guelph proclaims that this is the Original Boxed Meat Revolution. To which I must admit, unboxed traditionalist that I am, that I was unaware of the existence of a revolution, never mind competing revolutions. However, given that national boxed meat chain M&M Meat Shops emerged from nearby Kitchener, the whole area would seem to be a real hotbed of boxed meat.

The world has changed. You can too.

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I just saw an interesting WWF-Canada commercial on TV. The spot is a series of vignettes of activities that have been considered normal at some point in the past: unrestrained kids jumping around and playing in a convertible moving down the highway, a doctor lighting a cigarette for a pregnant woman, a man patting his secretary’s behind after she brings a drink to his desk, and so on. It ends with the message, “The world has changed,” and a shot of a man in a suit carrying his bicycle out of his townhouse and starting his ride to work. “You can too.”Brilliant. This is exactly the kind of message needed to counter the head-in-the-sand viewpoints of people like Case “people won’t get out of their cars” Ootes and Roger “if you’ve got $1.8 million to spend I think you can find something better to spend it on than bike racks” Anderson. A few of us already think that those two should be on display at the ROM.The TV spot goes with a print campaign that echoes the “society has changed” idea and features the tagline, “Not long from now, the way we’ve been treating the planet will seem just as wrong.” We can only hope.

Free rip-off!

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Incredible product innovation

The helpful people at CashMoney are offering an innovative new product: pre-paid debit cards. Yes, for just $1.99 to activate the card, $1.99 to reload it, $0.50 per debit transaction, $1.99 per ATM transaction, and $2.50 per month, you can have the convenience of a debit card just like all your friends and “start spending life your way.”

But wait just a minute; “pre-paid debit card?” Isn’t this wonderful and innovative product just like a bank account? When you open a bank account, aren’t you also activating your new debit card? When you withdraw money at an ATM, aren’t you depleting the pre-paid balance on your debit card? When you make a deposit to your new account, aren’t you essentially reloading your debit card?

An average month of 2 deposits, 4 ATM withdrawals, and 4 debits would cost $16.44 with a CashMoney debit card, versus $4 at Royal Bank, $3.90 at CIBC, or $0 at PC Financial. Even if you find yourself in the vicious cycle of payday loans, you’re far better off taking the money and walking across the street to the bank to use their services rather than loading up your CashMoney debit card. Surely it’s not so hard to get a bank account these days that a CashMoney “pre-paid debit card” is filling a legitimate need.

I assume that the “free” offer mentioned on the sign above waives the activation fee, but preserves all of the other fees. MoneyMart also offers a debit card which is just as big a money pit as CashMoney’s.

It’s amazing (not in a good way) that these things are still available in Ontario.

Inspiration in a soft solid

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Take the Risk

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I opened up my first package of Degree anti-perspirant, but I sure wasn’t expecting a motivational message. It’s been four days since I let my underarms take the risk and the only thing they’re doing so far is sweating a bit more than usual.

Risa, who’s a long-time Degree user, assures me that there are no such messages on the women’s product. Does Unilever think that men need more motivation than women, or just that we’ll buy any crazy thing that talks to us in the morning? Thanks, I think I will take the risk and buy a different brand next month. Something that doesn’t bring Successories to mind.