Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Have a story. No, wait. Have a point.

I buy the books. I scan the blogs. I even, upon Michael Eisner's advice, try to read the brogs. So I've learned that story-telling can be a powerful marketing tool and you can well imagine my excitement at finding a new brand of crackers with the name "Elsa's Story." From Godin's lips to marketers' ears!

Then I read the package:

"Elsa's Story sends you back to a time and place when you were young and carefree. It is about a memory, a hint of nostalgia, captured in the scents and tastes of warm cookies baking. Elsa's Kitchen was always open, her recipes remaining a well kept secret. Elsa's heritage is now relived through the goodness of quality ingredients and care that remind us of tastes long forgotten."

What is that? Why does it sound like the notes for manufacturing a story and not a story itself? In fact, there is no story, only a description of what effect the story should have on us. Puzzling.

Unless.

Unless they're doing a bit. Yes, that's it. This is a send-up of advertising, right? A parody of everything overwrought and unauthentic, and a rebuke to ad people everywhere.

In which case, it might be genius.

2 comments:

Tony Daniel said...

Kind of lacking that beginning, middle and end thing, not to mention character, plot and setting. Ah, but I remember Elsa and her open kitchen. All the boys used to come around about midnight. Talk about your crackers.

Irene Done said...

Open kitchen, boys, midnight...now THAT'S a story. You have succeeded where others have so miserably failed.