[The episode’s about Invader Zim, CW: Mild spoilers for a few episodes of a cartoon that is almost 25 years old. Enjoy the following barely related rant below.]
So I had this idea of doing a riff on some ‘90s commercial about Hungry Man TV dinners or something about potatoes (listen to the episode, it’ll make sense), but I found this article today about how this potato chip company (the biggest one, they make most of the chips but I’m also not advertising for them so no name drop, the article’s linked below) is doing a “drastic rebrand” after finding out that 42% of consumers “didn’t know their chips were made out of potatoes” and to that I say, “…Huh? How?!” <HowSway.mp4>
Ok, so: A slightly sneaky play that some corporate leadership will do, especially new leadership, is to futz with the branding or logo. If you’re a job-hopping Sweaty Executive who’s looking for a line item to put on their LinkedIn page or whatever, you spearhead a logo or branding change. You as the executive don’t have to do much (marketing and your art departments are doing most of the work), but it’s still a project you, Sweaty Executive, led. So, credit taken. This potato thing sounds like the absolute flimsiest excuse to do a rebrand ever. Either that, or American education is so in the toilet that we don’t know stuff about snack food, the thing that we should obviously be best at. And we are Too Good At Snacks for me to believe that.
It sounds like, among other things, that the logo is going to look more “like the Sun”, we are redoing the packaging to look “like the wood planks of a potato crate”, and that obviously we’re doing to shout out that the chips are, in fact, made from “real potatoes”. I cannot believe that marketing is a real thing. This truly is the darkest timeline.
Also what other questions were asked on this survey?!?! Idk, I’m spiraling out (like spiral cut potatoes, ayyyyy). At any rate, I will be thinking about this 500 word pseudo-press release for the next several hours. Enjoy the episode. Next time I’ll just stick to rewriting the Doom Song or something.
Inspired by a mutual love of the indie pop duo Tegan And Sara, hosts Ashley Burgy and Adrian King take listeners on an unconventional yet insightful look back at the pop culture that shaped them during their formative years and beyond. We’d love to chat music, sports, or other pop culture mayhem on social media. See our links below for more details!
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Intro/Outro Song: “Talking Like A Teen” written and performed by Ro Panuganti.
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