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Every once in a while I'll notice that I've been hooked by a product without even realizing it, thanks to a cunning marketing strategy.
The first such instance I can remember was by Gilette, the people who make shaving razors and blades and whatnot. On my eighteenth birthday, I recieved in the mail a small, brown and otherwise non-descript box. There was no return address. Thinking it must be either a birthday present or a small explosive device, I took my chances and opened it to discover a gillette Mach 3 razor and three replacement blades. There was a note attached, from Gillette, telling me (in essence) "Congratualtions! You're a man now, and we at Gilette thought you might need a man's razor".
I didn't have much facial hair at the time, but there was enough to require grooming every week or so, and I admit I was touched by the sentiment. I stopped using my older brother's leftover razor and started using the Mach 3. To this day I have never owned another kind of razor, nor do I have any plans to in the future. Fuck that "Quatro" noise, that shit is a joke to me. You could tell me that the lotion applied to the strips above and below the blades of the Mach 3 is harvested in an incredibly painful and ultimately fatal process whereby it is taken from the cerebral membranes of still living and feeling orphans, and I would grunt and remark that I never would have guessed that such smoothness and closeness could come from orphan brains. Isn't technology fascinating!, I would say.
Is this because the Mach 3 is inherently a superior razor? Hell, maybe. I wouldn't know. I've never used another razor and I doubt I ever will, unless it's one of those crazy vibrating Mach 3s. I never would have thought I would be susceptible to product endorsement under the guise of some bogus coming of age ceremony, but, well, here I am, still using a Mach 3 (I still only shave once or twice a week. I don't change the blade often, but when I do I am shocked at the closeness, the smoothness of the shave every time. Every time, goddamit. The poor orphans don't even come up).
Several of my friends were hooked in the same way, by recieving a strange unmarked box on their eighteenth birthdays with a note telling them that if they're going to make it in this MAN'S WORLD, they are going to need a MAN'S RAZOR. I have no idea where Gilette got our information. I didn't care, since they were giving me stuff on my birthday.
I don't know how I feel about being hooked so easily. Even worse was the time I was sitting around a friend's apartment getting high and a commercial for Slim Jims* came on, and immediately I craved a Slim Jim. For about a year after, whenever I got high I wanted more than anything else a goddam Slim Jim. From one single commercial this happened. I knew it was happening to. But I could't stop the cravings, I just waited until they went away.
So. Has this happened to anyone else? Or am I just really, really easily swayed?
*For those of you who don't know, Slim Jims are a brand of Beef Jerky that, in all likelyhood, contain absolutely no beef. They are made from the worst parts of any animal that happens to be near a Slim Jim factory, all rolled up in a pig's intestine. Deeeeeeelicious! |
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