Diary of an up and coming sociopath

I can’t help feeling I’ve been neglecting updates recently, and it’s mostly because I’ve been falling asleep during the time I’m supposed to be updating. Maybe it’s because th clocks went back but my brain didn’t.

Still, I mentioned I was going to do this particular update a while back, but I think now is the time to actually get around to it.

Consider, if you will, the word “snack.” It’s an unassuming word, vaguely onomatopaeic, with chiefly positive connotations. An ideal term, perhaps, for marketing food under.

I know someone at Cadburys agrees because I’ve got this to prove it:

Admit it, the word has lost all meaning. Now when you see this:

it doesn’t even look that odd.

I’m not so sure what it is that means cadburys need five products all named the same thing. You’d think this would cause a certain amount of confusion. Especially the fact that not all of the versions are even remotely the same. One of those snacks contains shortbread, another contains digestive, and another contains wafer, but it’s not like they’re even all biscuit-based. 4 of them contain some element of biscuit, if you count wager, though two of them have raisins in. From the picture, that last one appears to be acorn and blueberry but I’m reliably informed that it’s raisins and biscuit.

At least two of the logos are similar enough that it suggests a vague attempt at a whole co-ordinated line of “snack” foods, and the font is even more similar on some of those. Nevertheless, it’s not like these products are being promoted, so who can tell if there’s any marketing co-ordination going on at all?

Frankly, I’m starting to think “snack” is just a name they use as a placeholder and they forget to change it. Or is it that one hand doesn’t know what the other’s doing at Cadburys? Perhaps they have five departments each of which has independantly come up with the idea for a “Snack” bar.

No matter how much I hate it when companies take away their products without adequate explanation (Terry’s Pyramint, where art thou!?) I propose some kind of “Snack Idol” competition where the most favoured snack bar remains and the others are removed from the market. Kind of like highlander, there can be only one. As an aside, I think cutting the heads of people knocked out of pop idol is a great idea. Especially if they do it to the winners as well.

Just so we’re clear, my money’s on the Snack Shortbread. I’ll get you some numbers you can text in at some point soon.