As consumer goods go, I’ve got no time for oranges.
A world containing orange juice has no need of oranges. Faced with the choice between Orange and Orange Juice, the choice is clear.
If I may deploy a gratuitous sex simile, it’s like taking a really gorgeous naked chick, then dressing her up in an impenetrable gimp suit and giving her a yeast infection.
I have no idea what was going through the manufacturer’s minds.
So I surprised myself when walking past a corner shop in Earl’s Court a couple months ago. Proudly advertised just inside the doorway was a big tray of oranges, boasting the slogan “Big Orange – 50p”.
Big Orange.
I went in and bought one immediately. Didn’t even think about it.
It’s possibly the most effective piece of marketing I’ve ever come across.
Scrawled in black felt pen on a scrap of white card in the doorway of a skanky corner shop: “Big Orange”. One adjective (two if you want to be difficult) totally sold me on the idea.
Yeah, I want a big orange. A Big Orange.
An hour later I’m back at my hotel, staring stupidly at this big orange, wondering why the hell I bought it and what I was supposed to do with it.
Stupid impulse buys.
Anyway, I only bring this up now, months after the event, because I’ve just found the big orange at the bottom of my bag.
Yum. I just had a high-quality Sainsbury’s veggie curry.
It came out of a can, but I know it was high quality because of the description on the label:
“Selected vegetables cooked in a balti style sauce with tomatos and onions.”
Selected vegetables, see.
Selected.
Not like those curries-in-a-can from one of those newfangled cheapo European supermarkets.
You know, the ones containing vegetables which have not been selected.
Those supermarkets drive me crazy. Aldi, Lidl…. with their non-selected vegetables vegetable curry.
Bastards
It’s little wonder they are able to sell their curries so cheap. Going to the trouble of actually selecting a vegetable is an expensive, time-consuming process.
It’s the mark of quality.
When I buy a canned curry, I want my vegetables selected, damn it!
I don’t want them assigned to the can by some kind of highfalutin pseudorandom algorithm in some Eurocrat bastard’s supercomputer in Brussels.
I don’t want them carried into the curry processing plant on an unusually strong breeze, or inadvertently dropped into the curry vats from the mouths of small passing animals.
I want my vegetables selected! Nothing else will do.
Greetings card shops are great. Such a wonderful antidepressant.
If you’re in a bit of a grumpy mood, isn’t it cool to know there’s a place on your local high street or shopping mall that’s filled with pictures of kittens and funny jokes?
And you get to read them all for free!
I recently made the acquaintance of a chap who writes such cards, the jokey ones, for a living.
While I got the impression he didn’t find the job especially exciting, it struck me as something that should be immensely rewarding.
Some of this guy’s cards have sold millions of copies.
Think about that.
Let’s say a card sells a million copies. That means a million people have read your joke, smiled, and thought: “That’s good. I’ll pay two quid for that.”
Another million people have then opened the card, read your joke, and smiled.
You’ve just made two million people smile!
That’s more than anything on BBC Three ever did.
(because, you know, of the ratings, cough)
I was in a card shop the other day, looking for this guy’s copyright notice on the back of various jokey cards. Contribute my two quid to his kids’ shoe fund if I could.
After a few minutes, a shop assistant saw me looking.
“They all cost the same, you know,” she said.
Apparently I look like the kind of person who will only buy the very cheapest of birthday cards for his sister.
After I’d dirtylooked the assistant away, I noticed the card in my hand was a Hallmark card.
I noticed this because it had the Hallmark logo rather prominently on the front.
Why?
Let’s think about the logic of this for a second.
Companies put their logos on things because they spend a lot of money marketing their brands so you come to associate those brands with quality.
When you go into a shop, you see their brand on something and think: “Oh, it’s so-and-so brand. The TV told me this is good stuff, so I’ll buy it.”
This works with, say, a can of beans. You can’t open up a can of beans and start munching away in the supermarket to make sure it’s good stuff.
You just see the Heinz logo on the label and know it’s precisely the kind of sugary, flatulent, dayglo slop your toast is craving.
But with greetings cards, what possible value is there in having the Hallmark logo slapped prominently on the front of every card?
Has any human being ever purchased a greetings card based on who made it?
Do some people walk into a shop in such a hurry to buy a card that they cannot spare a moment to actually read it first?
“I’m simply too busy to read this card, what with the modern-day hectic lifestyle I keep reading about and iPhones and the internets and so forth, but I see the Hallmark logo and therefore I trust that the sentence written on the front and the sentence written on the inside will be of the highest possible quality.”
Or are there people out there with such a shocking lack of judgement that they cannot figure out whether a card is any good for themselves.
“Well, it looks like a joke greetings card, but unfortunately I am utterly incapable of determining whether it’s actually funny. There’s no laugh track or anything. But wait! Look! The Hallmark logo! I have erred, it surely must be a funny joke indeed.”
Or…
“Sure, it’s a picture of a kitten sniffing a puppy sniffing a duckling, but is it cute? Well, it does have an ugly Hallmark logo in the top corner, so I guess it must be.”
Are we really that fucking stupid Hallmark?! Is that what you’re telling us? That we’re a bunch of easily distracted cultural plebeians, incapable of making life choices disassociated from corporate branding?
Well!?
I’m all angry now.
Under normal circumstances I may have considered an antidepressant trip to the mall, but I’m not sure that it would work any more.
I may have spoiled it.
Whether you like it or not, when it comes to operating systems it’s still a two-horse race, and the company needs to take a page from the Republican playbook.
“Go negative early and often.”
Apple did.
Here are some suggested slogans for a new Windows ad campaign.
*
Grow Up. Use Windows.
Isn’t It About Time You Learned How To Use A Proper Computer?
Stop Preening.
Deep Down, You Know Your Mac Blows.
Mac OS – Face It, Even Vista’s Better Than That Gay Shit.
Windows – If You Can’t Figure Out How To Use It, We Don’t Want You Anyway.
Hey, Dude, Pretty Mac! Compensating For Something?
[Image showing Speak-N-Spell evolving into Mac evolving into Gameboy evolving into Windows PC]
It’s A Computer, Not A Pair Of Fucking Sneakers.
Mac OS – More Expensive, Does Less Shit
“If I Wear A Black Turtleneck And Grow A Fucking Goatee, Will That Shut You Up?”
As consumer goods go, I’ve got no time for oranges. 
