Wednesday, October 22, 2003
So yesterday I was eating a Hershey's chocolate bar that I had received in the mail, along with a sheet of "Frighteningly Funny" jokes. As per usual, there is a contest associated with this particular candy bar and the grand prize is apparently a mini cooper filled with Hershey's chocolate. What a great prize! A car filled with chocolate! I just hope the car hasn't been sitting out in the sun too long, especially these days, because it would end up being a prize of a mini cooper filled with chocolate mush.
I noticed that the website for Hershey's is advertised as not www.hersheys.com, which is a website (I checked), but www.hersheysHAPPINESS.com. Hershey's happiness? No one asked me, but aside from the use of aliteration, this does not seem to be the slickest add campaign in the book. Chocolate it will make you happy. I am not denying the truth behind this statement, but rather wondering why this statement needs to be made at all. Does this chocolate company really feel it is necessary to reinforce the connection between chocolate and happiness?
I suppose I do not understand the advertising industry, in which they try to sell you a concept like happiness, rather than an object llike chocolate.
What is wrong with just selling chocolate? So simple, but it is tasty. When you try to start selling me happiness I begin to doubt and have questions. I wonder how happiness can be bought so cheaply, how it can be bought at all. And that leads me to wonder if I am so shallow that my happiness can be fullfilled with a $0.99 candy bar and if we live in a a socitey in which we are indeed all that shallow. What strings are attached to this happiness sold in a brown and foil wrapper that is so easily gotten? What strings are attached to the people who are producing, marketing, and shoving this edible happiness down my throat? If the puppet master pulling these strings can give me happiness so easily, cannot he just as easily yank it away!
No, you see, better just to sell the chocolate. Don't worry, I will still buy it even if it is not wrapped in the flag of the state of euphoria. Because C is for chocolate, that's good enough for me.
In the words of the immortal Kermit T. Frog, "How about 'Ocean Breeze Soap, it will get you clean?' "
Incidentally, there is no cent sign on the keyboard.
I noticed that the website for Hershey's is advertised as not www.hersheys.com, which is a website (I checked), but www.hersheysHAPPINESS.com. Hershey's happiness? No one asked me, but aside from the use of aliteration, this does not seem to be the slickest add campaign in the book. Chocolate it will make you happy. I am not denying the truth behind this statement, but rather wondering why this statement needs to be made at all. Does this chocolate company really feel it is necessary to reinforce the connection between chocolate and happiness?
I suppose I do not understand the advertising industry, in which they try to sell you a concept like happiness, rather than an object llike chocolate.
What is wrong with just selling chocolate? So simple, but it is tasty. When you try to start selling me happiness I begin to doubt and have questions. I wonder how happiness can be bought so cheaply, how it can be bought at all. And that leads me to wonder if I am so shallow that my happiness can be fullfilled with a $0.99 candy bar and if we live in a a socitey in which we are indeed all that shallow. What strings are attached to this happiness sold in a brown and foil wrapper that is so easily gotten? What strings are attached to the people who are producing, marketing, and shoving this edible happiness down my throat? If the puppet master pulling these strings can give me happiness so easily, cannot he just as easily yank it away!
No, you see, better just to sell the chocolate. Don't worry, I will still buy it even if it is not wrapped in the flag of the state of euphoria. Because C is for chocolate, that's good enough for me.
In the words of the immortal Kermit T. Frog, "How about 'Ocean Breeze Soap, it will get you clean?' "
Incidentally, there is no cent sign on the keyboard.
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