With the Super Bowl coming up, naturally I’m interested in the real competition: namely, all the ways the snack food aisle at my local grocery store is vying for my game-time nosh dollar. The marketing snippets are like a relentless pep talk urging football fans to stuff themselves – and to do so aggressively.
At this very moment, for instance, a bright green cardboard shelf crammed with bags of potato chips is alerting me in bold capital letters, among a scattering of X’s and O’s, that it’s “GAME ON” and “THIS IS YOUR TURF” and “THESE ARE YOUR SNACKS.” It’s all I can do to keep from tackling the shelf to the floor, ripping open a few helpless bags, and pigging out right then and there.
Nearby, meanwhile, containers of spicy almonds are exhorting, “GO HOT OR GO HOME!” “LET’S GET FIRED UP!” and “CRAVE VICTORIOUSLY.” What does it even mean to crave victoriously? I’m on the losing end if I don’t satisfy my every last longing to gorge? I feel bloated just reading the packaging.
Then again, like the games themselves, snack talk can get pretty unpredictable.
Case in point – a couple of shelves over, amidst all the truculent chow-chatter, an outlier: several bags of popcorn, no hint of the big game, and flavored with “HIMALAYAN SEA SALT.”
What the what?
Mind you, geography has never been my strong suit, but is there even a Himalayan Sea? If so, does that mean Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing actually scaled Everest by boat?
Confused as a QB during a broken play, I scramble – straight to the internet. And get this:
Apparently there was once a sea where this salt comes from, but that was many millions of years ago. It’s not a sea anymore and hasn’t been for quite some time. So naming this stuff sea salt is a little like calling me and you a sea creature because our remotest of ancestors managed to wriggle their way to shore many millennia back.
In fact, according to every reliable site I can find, this particular sea salt is not even from the Himalayan mountains – it’s actually from the hills of Pakistan. Evidently, “HIMALAYAN SEA SALT” is deemed to have a nicer ring to it than “PAKISTANI HILL SALT.”
At this point my brain has reached marketing overload. Overfed on snack lingo, I’m feeling the slightest bit dizzy.
And I haven’t even gotten to the beer aisle yet.
Bonus Lines
Got an unintentionally amusing line or phrase from anywhere in the business world? Email it to us at linesofcommerce@foothillsbusinessdaily.com and if we use it, you’ll receive $5 plus your name (or alias) in print.
Here’s a sample from Life’sRichPungentry:
Saw a candle advertised as having an “exclusive home fragrance.” Forgive me, but with infant twins and several dogs in the house, isn’t the exclusive home fragrance exactly what I’m trying to get away from?