Читать книгу Chocolate Busters: The Easy Way to Kick It! - Jason Vale, Jason Vale - Страница 15

Certain days of the week are synonymous with certain feelings, and none more so than Friday. Ever since we started school, Friday has had a different feeling to any other day – it has what can only be described as ‘That Friday Feeling’. It’s a feeling that was quickly exploited by the chocolate industry. So now you don’t have to thank that fact you’ve been paid, or that the week is over, or that you can let your hair down that it’s Friday – NO, now you can ‘Thank Crunchie It’s Friday’! Not only have they cleverly managed to link this sugar-infested, sorry, I mean ‘Honey-Combed’ product with a feeling that’s got not a jot to do with Crunchie at all, but they also managed to reinforce the message with the musical lyrics which accompanied the ad. If you can’t recall it, allow me:

‘I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know that I want you – want you.’

A Derren Brown moment if ever I heard one! And if one Friday afternoon you do find yourself feeling good and just happen to ‘spontaneously’ reach for a Crunchie – WHAM, they’ve got you! The minute your brain links that feeling with that product it will search for it again, perhaps on a cold, bleak, boring Tuesday afternoon, for example.

From the first moment your brain makes a positive connection between chocolate and emotion you’re in trouble … and they know it.

This is why Mars has recently gone one better than the Crunchie gang by creating a slogan and a £2 million ad campaign that manages to link the product to just about any wonderful and joyous emotion. Yes, gone are the days where ‘A Mars A Day Helps You Work, Rest And Play’, now we have a product which produces ‘Pleasure You Can’t Measure’. Yep, somehow this little mind-twister slipped past the people at trading standards. Billboard after billboard depict pictures and captions of moments in our life where the pleasure just cannot be measured. ‘Your First Kiss’ reads one, ‘Weekends’ says another. Ad after ad depicting some silly and many wonderful moments that you truly want to recapture, especially when you’re lonely or having a bad day. This is why there’s hardly a person on the planet who, when they’re feeling down says, ‘Bugger it, I’m having a grape!’, but there are thousands of people who say, ‘Sod it, life’s too short’ and reach for some chocolate. People don’t reach for grapes for one reason – the British grape industry hasn’t conditioned them to eat grapes as a response to emotion – and, oh yes, grapes aren’t full of unnatural drug-like substances!