How to land on your feet after a marketing crisis? After losing the infamous spilled hot coffee case in the landmark 1995 lawsuit Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants, McDonald's (and just about every company serving coffee) added a warning label to its coffee cups. A few years ago that warning was something to the effect of "Caution: the beverage you are about to drink is very hot".
This morning I was sipping my McDonald's coffee and staring bleary eyed at the photos of the young, hip, gorgeous boy and girl on the cup. A
little warning light flickered in my sleepy brain...that light that sometimes goes on at the moment of market manipulation. There it was in black and white, the warning had transformed to "Caution: I'm Hot" with tiny inset lettering stating "Handle with Care".Maybe they paid another $2.9 million to the marketing genius who came up with that one. It's a warning, it's a (not so) subliminal message. "I love this coffee", I thought to myself, and "I'm so hot"!
Speaking of the creepy aspects of marketing, read a book recently by my pal William Gibson (at least he feels like an old friend) Pattern Recognition. The hilarious thing about this novel is that Gibson has conceived of a character who has a phobia—of brand names!!! Could he have written the whole novel tongue in cheek? Unfortunately this is not a great novel, but it definitely is a great outline of a novel.
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