Although I am in marketing, I am an absolute SUCKER for marketing ploys. Actually, I think that's why I got into marketing. I love the silly "NEW AND IMPROVED box" type packaging, the many exclamation marks and what gets people to actually buy the goods.
One of the recent ones in Paris is the Spiderman burger from Quick. Besides having a penchant for comic books, it also showed the Spidey burger as having nice stringy cheese. You know, the Asterix and Obelix kind I like. It showed oozey gooey cheese along with a bun imprinted with a web. "How cool!", thought I, "A web on a bun, imagine that!"
"How lame!", thought the boy, "I better humour her, though, she's scary when denied her vittles"
I was obsessed with trying it but it never seemed like the right time. Either it was right after I had eaten or right before going to a big dinner. Finally the time was right and we went for it.
This was what my Speederman burrrrger (how the French pronounce it) like... a soft, yellowish, briochey bun, which was really light, airy and plain awful, but true to the advert, imprinted with a spider's web.
Then I looked inside .... ...
...
it was awful. It besides looking completely off, it was the kind of semi coagulated liquidy-but-not type of cheese with a sad looking patty. It was "stringy" in the sense that it stuck to the bread and pulled away but it was terrible.
The worse part was it TASTED dreadful. The bread was so soft and horrid it fell away when you picked it up and the cheese tasted just as described, melted then coagulated with an oily taste. One bite was about all I could manage.
The boy described Quick to my father and brother as the McDonald's of France, thus igniting a curiosity to do a taste comparison. Listen, you heard it here. It is not worth it. Even McDonald's seems gourmet compared to this.
Now to go onto bigger and better things..... like Flunch!! I know, I know, another cheap crappy restaurant. But the name! Flunch! You can just hear the cogs of the marketing whizzes at work....
"I want a name that represents our 'unique selling proposition' for a lunch for busy executives, something exotic sounding..."
"Hmmm, a fast lunch, you say...."
...Till the week after.... I'll be whiling away the days in the Loire Valley this week on a much anticipated roadtrip with a girlfriend... que la vie est dure....
