“You think you know Wheat Thins? F*%k you.“

Prepare yourself to fall completely in love with – then back out of love with – then be sort of ok again with –  a brand, all in the space of 6:50.

Yes, we posted this because it’s funny.

Yes, we posted this because it reminds us just how ridiculous we all are in our attempts to turn the art of conversation into the “science” of marketing.

But most of all, we posted this because it reminds us of Kurt Vonnegut’s asshole.

No, not his actual asshole, but the big ol’ asterisk he drew in Breakfast of Champions that represented an asshole. Right in the middle of the page. Just drew that thing. In the middle of a non-illustrated novel.
Which is, as we’ve noted before, A Thing You Cannot Do. But he did.

Stephen Colbert’s sponsortunity/takedown/whatthehelljusthappened routine certainly shows us how ridiculous megacorporate brand strategists can be, but more importantly, it lifts the curtain on strategy itself. Which is a bona-fide asterisk-in-the-middle-of-the-page-moment.

You can’t do that, right? You can’t just tell people your brand strategy…they might…they might discover that crackers are not in fact baked by tree-dwelling elves, but that they come from giant megacorporations who want their money! Gasp!

Here’s another example:

This Old Spice ad starts out as a Bounce ad; becomes an Old Spice ad, then a Bounce ad again and finally, we get a strong powerful Old Spice finish.

Again, you can’t do that! You just spent half your expensive media time plugging a brand you didn’t mean to plug! Unless…unless you’re a megacorporation who happens to own both brands. But even then, aren’t you outing yourself as a megacorporation? Won’t the people rise up with pitchforks and torches?

And since you’re a megacorporation, aren’t you supposed to be acting like mega-tools? Like the people who wrote that Wheat Thins memo?

So, gentle readers, we ask you: How are we supposed to feel about this? Megacorporations drawing asterisks? It’s unnatural, we tells ya! And since megacorporations love nothing more than blindly following one another, is it reasonable to expect more of this?

We sure hope so.