Apple halo does not extend to spreads
Marketeers have won an 'epic fail' award after trying to
capitalise on Apple's trick of sticking the letter I in front of everything.
Kraft have been peddling its Vegemite spread by giving a
computer feel. They decided to call it iSnack 2.0. Vegemite is a vile tasting black spread which is popular
in Australia and New Zealand and became famous in Europe with the song “Down
Under” as liking it is a sure sign of being an antipodean. You need to be served it on your rusks as a kid to be
able to identify as food and few adults who never grew up on it would touch it
with a barge pole.
Obviously marketeers realised their problem and thought
they would give it a bit of a computer image and link it to the rise of
the
iPod and iPhone. What they didn't realise there is nothing computish
about
it. It is a vegetable-based black yeast extract which looks like
insulation
grease you might use assembling a computer but that is about it. Steve
Jobs, being a big fan of vegetables, might like it
but that is about as close as vegemite is going to get to computer
technology. Not surprisingly the Internet has dubbed the campaign an
"epic fail" status.
Epicfailstore.com, an Australian company set up to sell
t-shirts depicting some of the better known viral examples including several
famous Bushisms, today added the iSnack 2.0 to it's online offering. You can now buy the iSuck 2.0 shirt with a picture of the
new Vegemite jar. The name was chosen in a public naming competition on
Saturday but has been given the collective thumbs down by consumers.
It was the the second most talked about topic on Twitter
within 24 hours, spawned Facebook hate groups, blogs and has prompted a torrent
of online bile. Apparently the US-based Kraft was rethinking the brand
name which is already on half a million of the iSnack jars due to go on sale in
Australia.