I like stuff.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Say, Bob....

Marketing Guy: Say, Bob...sales don't seem to be doing so good. Think maybe people are getting tired of what we sell?
Product Development Guy (Bob): Oh, no. I suspect they've come to their wits' end trying to sort out the complicated buying, logistics, cooking, assembly, customization, etc.
Marketing Guy: Crap. I never considered all that work.
Product Development Guy (Bob): It's ok, I've got just the thing. See, we'll do all of the portioning and whatnot. Heck, even the assembly and simplify the cooking instructions. Individually wrap it, throw in a couple ketchup or relish packets, and they've not got to make any hard choices. Just follow the instructions. Heck, we can probably sell it to them at a higher price for all the effort we saved them.



Individually wrapped hot dogs (with bun!) should be noted in the annals of cultural wasting.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am waiting for the gourmet-low-cal, no-carb, with white wine lunchable series for really busy wasteful people.

stiill said...

The amazing thing here is the taste/effort tradeoff. For approximately 3 extra minutes of work, you could have something that actually tasted pretty good-- as opposed to gut-wrenchingly bad.

At this point, why specify the product? Just:

FOOD
- savory
- capable of sustaining life
- preparation requirement: ability to insert package into microwave; press start

Does the target audience need to know more?

transiit said...

Well, I'm not entirely convinced that hot dogs are capable of sustaining life, ketchup or not.

But I think there might be something to the idea that a product could be made that's somewhat nutritious, has a shelf-life of forever, needs no fancy preparation, and is cheap as dirt.

No, I don't mean Taco Bell. That shit ain't nutritious.

I'm thinking a "Hey, clearly you don't care about what you eat anyway, so why not just save the time, effort and money, and eat one of our gruel packets? They're better for you."

(bonus points of gruel packets contain just enough olestra (or something similar) that any binge-eating is self-correcting)

stiill said...

I know normal hot dogs are-- I've seen the mold. You're right, though, that I don't know if these pre-assembled, frozen, "hot dogs" are capable of sustaining life.

I do think that a nutritious, satisfying, no prep time gruel might have a real market.