Love is in the air, and it smells like pepperoni

In honor of Valentine's Day, get a load of this shit.



That is a screenshot of this page, which I took because since the listed end date for the promotion is 2/14/12, who knows how long it'll be up for your perusal.

I mean, holy shit, right? Look, I know this is probably just for publicity. Pizza Hut comes up with a gimmicky thing that no one would ever actually buy, it gets kicked around the web because people love that Neiman Marcus fantasy gift shit, and boom, free advertising for the $10 dinner box, which I did not previously know was a thing. But just imagine for a second that Pizza Hut was serious here. How fucking deranged is this?

First, I love that it's not a diamond ring, although if you're the kind of woman who INSISTS on an expensive diamond for your engagement ring, you're probably not going to be too impressed with the $10 dinner box proposal no matter how nice the ring is.

Then, how about a photographer AND a videographer? I'm not sure that's enough. How about a caricature artist too, and maybe a stenographer to get down every word you're saying? You really want to remember every facet of your embarrassing Pizza Hut proposal.

I also love that the stated cost is $10,010, because that includes the dinner box. Yeah, we couldn't just include that in the obscene $10,000 engagement package. That's extra. (The "plus tax" also kills me.) This is really the biggest tip-off that Pizza Hut is mostly kidding around, I think (although I'm sure if anyone actually wanted this they'd be happy to sell it). It's funnier if you take this extravagant package and make the cheap-ass food cost extra on top of it.

If you click on "more information" it gives you the press release, which only makes it clearer that this is a publicity stunt of the highest caliber. Most of the time is spent talking about the dinner box itself:

The $10 Dinner Box Proposal Package includes a ruby engagement ring, limo service, flowers, fireworks show, photographer, videographer and of course, most importantly, the mouth-watering new $10 Dinner Box.

Fitting all of these amazing items into one package echoes the feat pulled off inside the new Pizza Hut $10 Dinner Box, which includes a medium one-topping rectangular pan pizza, five breadsticks with marinara sauce and 10 cinnamon sticks with a sweet icing cup in one box for only $10.

Just by the way, that is like the starchiest thing that ever starched.

"If we’re able to fit pizza, breadsticks and dessert into one box for only $10, why stop there?" asked Kurt Kane, Pizza Hut CMO.

Right.

Perhaps my favorite part - and again, it's irrelevant because ain't nobody buying this - is in the fine print:

"We may substitute listed products with equivalent value products."

I wonder which of those products is most likely to be substituted for an item of equal value. If you're the sort of person who loves Pizza Hut so much you're willing to propose marriage over a pizza box, maybe you could trade in the fireworks show for a couple years' worth of Lipitor.

Love Wheat Thins? Then you'll love Wheat Thins!

It's kind of hard to believe that this social-media ambush stuff wasn't cooked up by Crispin Porter, but it's actually from an agency called The Escape Pod. Think Wheat Thins are boring? Think again! Now they're still boring, but also annoying.



(Credit to reader Tyler for bringing this particular spot to our attention.)

When Wheat Thins started this campaign, there was - understandably - a lot of debate online over whether it was real or whether the people being visited were simply actors. Wheat Thins responded with a spot in which they visit one such questioner, thus "proving" that they are real. Never mind that, even if you trust that that spot isn't itself faked, it hardly proves without a doubt that all previous spots were not faked. But whatever. The issue here is not the legitimacy of these ads. The issue here is whether or not they suck. Which they do.

Crunch is Calling Guy: "This is CHRISMACHO. He tweeted, 'Had a hunch today would be good but didn't think it would be this good... Wheat Thins is now following me on Twitter.'"
[They knock on Chris's door]
CCG: "You Chris?"
Chris: "Yeah."
CCG: "You remember when you tweeted, 'Had a hunch today would be good but didn't think it would be this good... Wheat Thins is now following me on Twitter?'"

This commercial is now half over. And virtually all that has happened is that the Crunch is Calling guy read this snooze-inducing tweet twice. Twice! I didn't need to hear that shit once. By the way, every single commercial in this series involves this dude reading an asinine tweet out loud twice. Great way to get me to change the channel; not so great way to get me to care about what's happening.

CCG: "We made your day once, and I have a hunch we're gonna make your day again today. We have this for ya."
[Truck reading "Follow @CHRISMACHO, He's Awesome" pulls up]
CCG: "Guy's gonna be driving around town all day today."

You probably could have spent this money on, say, advertising for Wheat Thins. I don't know. Seems like it might have been a better use of your marketing budget. To those of you who would say that this is advertising for Wheat Thins, let me direct your attention to the following tweets (which are [sic]) received by @CHRISMACHO since this spot began airing:

"hey u the dude from the cereal commercial" - @RobbCroyl

"u the guy frum the chip commercial????" - @713MAINMAINE

"You the dude from the condoms commercial?" - @KWAPT

That last one is most likely a joke, but I'm guessing the first two aren't. It reminds me of when people find posts on this blog by Googling the names of other companies (like people Googling the description of a Burger King ad but writing "Wendy's" with it). When you aren't direct, your brand name is not always as memorable as you think. In this case, we're talking about a commercial in which Wheat Thins themselves don't even appear as anything other than set dressing! At least in other stupid ads in this campaign, like this one, a box of Wheat Thins makes a legitimate appearance.

The end result of this commercial is that @CHRISMACHO now has about 13,000 followers. I'm guessing this is almost 13,000 more than he would otherwise have had, but it's still a pretty modest number considering that his handle was given out in a national ad campaign that explicitly told people to follow him. I'm guessing there were plenty of people who read his feed first, didn't think he was that awesome, and decided that maybe they shouldn't do something just because a box of crackers told them to. Also, @CHRISMACHO does not spend all his time tweeting about Wheat Thins (there are a couple tweets in the last month that mention them), so not a lot of residual advertising there, even to that fairly small number of people who did opt to follow him. But I'm sure it was worth it.

Here's the other thing about these ads: in just about all of them, people get visited because they commented about Wheat Thins on Twitter in a way that made it clear they are already consumers of Wheat Thins. Am I crazy or is saturating the market of existing consumers not really that effective a strategy? Seems to me you should be wanting to create new buyers, and commercials which tell us almost nothing about your product beyond the fact that it exists just might not be the best way to do that. I mean, unless the hope is that this commercial encourages craven fame-whores to tweet about Wheat Thins just to get on TV... but that still doesn't mean they're buying Wheat Thins. The whole thing just seems counterintuitive.

On the bright side, at least these commercials aren't stupid... well, at least they're... um... at least they don't start off by pretending to be about helping Tibet?

Go home, Klondike, you're embarrassing yourself.

Remember Klondike's iconic jingle? "What would you doooo for a Klondike bar?"



The commercials were silly, but I get the message: Klondike bars are delicious. There's no need to sell this product any harder- chocolate and vanilla ice cream? That's a combination that never fails, unlike the combination of Klondike Bars and desperation. This includes a round-the-clock broadcast of Michael Ian Black harassing potential Klondike Bar customers who are walking, talking examples of "don't be this guy."

Do you want this guy to be your "bro"?



Klondike's grand plan to rebrand itself also includes a repulsive old-school type video game entitled "The Adventures of Khaki Pants Pete" on their "ironic" website. Jezebel rescues you from having to play the actual game by showing you screencaps here. As the embodiment of a Klondike Bar aficionado, Pete avoids his wife, shirks childcare responsibilities, hits on the babysitter, heads to a porn shop, dreams of his glory days as the frattiest gadabout in town, and then hits a bachelor party that involves interactive pudding wrestling. Oh, I'm sorry, "pudding freakin' wrestling."

Klondike, you are not beer. You're not an extreme sports drink. You're not hot wings. You're not beef jerky, jello shooters, corn chips, or Axe Body Spray. What you are is a nostalgic, cold, delicious treat for all kinds of people- men and women, children and grandparents. Why in the hell are you trying so hard to cut yourself off from a universal demographic?

So, you want me to do your job for you, at home, for free.

If there's anything worse than a bad ad campaign, it's one that desperately wants to enlist you, the viewer, to do the legwork. And better yet, to do the legwork and pay for the privilege.

AT&T has set up a site where you can now - get this! - make three-place-name stupid mashups of your very own, and then get those put on a t-shirt, which you can then wear, for the low low price of $17.95 plus shipping (which adds an astonishing six bucks to the total, meaning you're actually paying nearly $25). And won't you be proud when someone asks about your shirt and you have to explain to them not only that you're an embarrassing corporate shill but that you actually paid money to be an embarrassing corporate shill?

It took a lot of chutzpah on AT&T's part to push something like this, especially since the name generator isn't even very good. Would it really have been that difficult to, say, write into the code something that would keep letters from repeating if they were ones that didn't look good doubled up? I tried inputting Philadelphia, Delaware and Prague like in the ad, but instead of getting Philawareprague, I ended up with "Philaawue." Terrific. You couldn't even set it up to make the ones you used in your ads? Putting in Virginia, Colorado and Sacramento - which I assume are the constituent parts of "Virgicolomento" - gives me "Virorento."

The bad, albeit unsurprising, news is that you can't just type in swear words; AT&T recognizes them and tells you that you "owe the swear jar 25 cents" - at least it's not 25 dollars - and requests you try again, without even letting you see your creation in lights. The good news? It can still be tricked. See if you can figure out how I feel about this "viral" campaign from the following screenshot, which was not doctored in any way:



The last two aren't close to being real place names, of course, and I get the feeling they wouldn't print this even if I were willing to buy it, but I think I made my point. Population: 1, indeed.