Stephen Colbert Has Giant…Crackers
by David Atkins
This may be the most hilarious product placement skit of all time:
As a market researcher who has done way too many branding research exercises in my day, I can tell you these corporate suits are really serious about this stuff. Every major brand has an entire carefully crafted persona, complete with clothes it wears, music it listens to, cars it drives, the whole deal. What’s amazing is that if you put eight demographically similar people into a room to discuss the personality of any given major brand, you’ll get generally consistent answers. I’ve done it many times, and been appalled at the uncanny accuracy with which random people “know” these brands as if they were their neighbor and will describe their hypothetical personalities and appearances with frightening unanimity.
So when the hacks behind this cracker brand–which I refuse to give publicity by stating in writing here–gave Colbert this memo, I promise you they were absolutely in earnest, and had crafted this image of their brand through a meticulous self-reinforcing cycle of research and advertising repetition. And Colbert did exactly the right thing by skewering the hell out of them while taking every dime of their money. It will be interesting if any other company decides they want to play with fire by having Colbert do a major product placement for them.
Either way, ad agencies like to take corporate personhood a lot farther than anyone truly realizes, and even beyond Antonin Scalia’s wildest imagination. Naomi Klein barely scratched the surface.
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