Oh my Lord, the problem is even worse than I expected. The whole fortune cookie gambit is not run by Snapple, rather there is a separate media agency, Buzz Marketing, that is leading the cookie invasion. According to this Ad Age article, they have already taken over 25% of the fortune cookie market in the U.S.
There needs to be a boycott of the companies that use this form of guerilla advertising. Is anyone interested in launching a write-in campaign?
Just when you thought that marketing has crept into every possible crevice of one’s consciousness, some new advertising ploy pops up to shock the senses. At the end of my weekly meal with my grandmother earlier this week, we received two fortune cookies with the bill. When I opened my cookie, I was appalled by the contents, the Snapple logo, followed by the message, “Snapple says wearing a cape and underwear does not make you a superhero.” My grandmother was looking forward to her message, and has poor eyesight, so she asked me to read hers to her. It read, “Snapple says having dinner with an investment banker is chow not so fun.” There was no way that I could explain the tacky joke to her, and she was disappointed because there was no fortune. These Snapple people have now earned my wrath.
I know that fortune cookies aren’t really Chinese, but still they should remain advertising free. I remember being a superstitious little kid, who believed that if I tore the fortune, it would bring bad luck. Now I hope this bad luck strikes Snapple as people feel angry about marketing that has gone too far.
During the Privacy portion of my Internet and Society course, and the Free Speech portion of my Con Law course, we discussed the Nuremberg Files, a website that posts the home addresses and other personal information of doctors who perform abortions. The reasoning of the site is that one day when abortion is outlawed, these doctors will be put on trial for murder, akin to war criminals.
Today, I came across this site run by animal rights activists who posted the personal information of a Bay Area chef who is a big fan of foie gras. The harassment did not end there, as this article from a wine country newspaper points out, they vandalized his home (and the home of one of his partners last month) and attacked his new restaurant earlier this week.
So, this begs the question, what are the common impulses that drive two of the most extreme “domestic terrorism” groups to violence? It seems that violent PETA people have played into the plotlines of two recent works, too — in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and in the film 28 Days Later.
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Also, for the record, on Sunday, I sat at the same table as a vegan (albeit an environmental vegan), as I consumed foie gras.
There’s this chain of clothing stores called American Rag Cie, that I stop in every now and then to get ideas. I never buy anything there however, because its too expensive. When I went in over the weekend, I compared the prices of a couple of items, a pair of limited edition Adidas’s that Finch owns, and a 2K t-shirt that I own. The mark-up was on the Tee was 30% of what I paid, and the shoes were marked up by 20%. I’m trying to figure out if they’ve priced everything higher because their customers are used to plopping down lots of money for the one-stop hipster shopping. The cool hunter’s surcharge, perhaps?