Western Family Foolishness – The Letter

To Whom it May Concern,

I am long-time buyer and eater of your foods. I have enjoyed your bread, your ice cream, and even your salad dressings for many a year.

I have a Save-on-Foods quite near my home, and I go there regularly for my weekly grocery needs. Sometimes I laugh at your amusing product names, and I know that you are forced to deal with a competitive market, one in which many of the good and clever brand names are already taken.

I’ve had the long-defunct "Dr. Buzz", your Dr. Pepper alternative, and liked it. I’ve never eaten Fruity-O’s, but I can imagine what they taste like.

And I wonder, Western Family Foods, what your advertising department looks like. Is it just one lonely guy, working out of his basement, watching television ads and surfing the Internet, hoping to find a clever product name and then rip it off into something different enough that it will pass copyright, but derivative enough that it will be clear what he is copying?

Or do you have a team of Rhesus monkeys with a bin of magnetic words and a large fridge that they hurl them at?

I can only imagine it is the latter after stumbling on to this gem of a brand name in the cookie aisle: Blast O’ Chunks.

Really?

I mean….really?

I can give you five names better than that right here, right now.

Blast O’ Chips. Chunks O’ Cookie. Chips Galore. A Ton O’ Chunks. Chunky McCookerson’s Chocolate Explosions.

See? All of them better than Blast O’ Chunks.

I’m not sure if there was a quality control process here, but if so, it failed miserably. As a public service, I’ll act as quality control here and now, so perhaps this problem can be rectified.

This product sounds like a euphemism for vomiting.

That’s right, vomiting.

If the intention is, and I can only assume that it is, to have consumers purchase this product, it needs to convey the idea that it is full of yummy-tasting (presumably) chocolate-chip cookies. As it stands, despite the picture on the box, it sounds like a container full of vomit.

Unsurprisingly, vomit is a poor seller.

I understand the need for products such as this, and in fact, I appreciate it. There are have been several times in which I have found a grocery store brand product to be superior to the "real thing". This may even be one of those cases, but I’ll never know, and neither will anyone else, with a name like this.

While it may not be feasible to alter this product name now that it is on the market, I offer this helpful general suggestion – once the monkeys have finished their shift and gone home for the day, have a human look over their work before sending it straight to printing. In fact, have that human say it out loud a few times, think about what it might look like to have it on millions and millions of boxes. I can just about guarantee you’d sell more Chunky Blasts that way.

Warmest Regards

Letter Sent 11:39am Dec 8, 2009