Fancy Schmancy

Pardon me for being a curmudgeon, but this revolting twaddle  from Fancy Feast just brings out the stabby in me.

Okay – the kitten is very cute against the plush green carpet.  More than that, I need a barf bag to say.

From the website: “Fancy Feast® cat food brings you The Engagement — Immerse yourself in the story of loving couple Sean and Lisa as they embrace a new kitten and a new page in their relationship. Fancy Feast® Gourmet Kitten Food – the best ingredient is love.”

I’m not even going to address the obvious, to wit – LOVE IS NOT AN INGREDIENT.  Salt is an ingredient.  Pork is an ingredient.  In some varieties of cat food, “Animal Fat Preserved with BHA” is an ingredient, as are “Propionic Acid” and “Dried Whey.”  I’ve never seen LOVE on the ingredient list of a can of cat food.

But this sort of lunatic flummery is par for the course for Fancy Feast.  Their ads are generally over-the-top and sick-making.  Remember the “To Enchant” campaign? 

Here’s a still, to which I say – seriously? 

I like cats, too.... but WTF?

Folks, it’s a CAT.  It doesn’t get it.  It has NO IDEA what you’re feeding it, other than that it’s food.

The average cat has a brain that’s less than 2″ long and weighs a fraction more than an ounce.  Props to our furry friends, but I don’t think they have the processing power to be “enchanted” by a can of chicken by-products and cow sinew mash, or whatever this stuff is made of.

But I’m being naive here, a little bit on purpose.  Everyone knows that the ad isn’t selling things to the cat. (Right?  You know that, yes?)  And the clever marketeers who come up with these campaigns probably don’t believe that you, the credulous consumer, believe that your cat understands, or that the sales pitch is to the cat.   Still, they continue to churn this dribble out, knowing that they have the inside track to your deepest desires and your worst insecurities.  They’re playing us like limbic fiddles. 

And in “The Engagement,” the good folks at Fancy Feast have produced a campaign that ramps the brand’s stock-in-trade sticky schmaltzification of the cat/human relationship up to 11 by adding a layer of preposterousness and a dash of aspirational fuzzy-headed yearning.

Ladies – he is NEVER going to like your cat as much as he likes you.  Hell, your cat doesn’t even like you all that much.  You feed your cat and give it a nice warm place to live.  It puts up with your endless intrusive cuddles and baby talk, and in return, gets rewarded with plenty of schwag and chow and security — but rest assured, your cat would do just fine without you.   If you didn’t show up after work one day – and the door were left open – your cat wouldn’t even take a backward glance before slinking off into the nearest field or storm drain, where it would stalk mice and eat scraps and have a high old time living wild and free.  Would it miss the Fancy Feast?  Probably a little, for a day or two.  Then those mice would start tasting real good.

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Cat owners – suspect mostly the single, female, cat lady-type.  “Pet parents” (GROAN!).  Animal lovers – which these days isn’t just the description of a normal warm-hearted person who is generally positively inclined toward our fellow travelers, but instead indicates a very specific sub-species of  human.  And we all know who they are.

TECHNIQUE: Aspirational story-telling.  Sex.  Sex.  Cute kitties.  Guilt (because if you don’t feed your cat this particular brand of crap, you SUCK).  House-envy.  Also – sex.

THE BIG LIE: All of it, basically.  Your cat has no idea how much this costs, and doesn’t appreciate your having shelled out for it.

Twit Amok

At the Wells Fargo ATM machine this morning, getting some cash.  What’s the word for that, anyway?  Decrease?  Debit?  Can’t think of the word.  The Wells Fargo ATM machine itself asks you if you want to “get cash” – so maybe that’s the proper verb form these days.  Anyway.  There it was.  The whole screen, glowing at me in lurid orange, with that big fat stilly Twitter bird front and center.

He's happy and tweety and full of social fun!

“Follow us on Twitter!  We’d love to hear your feedback about our ATMs!!!”

Gah!  What fresh hell is this?

Some bright spark in the Marketing Department at Wells Fargo was paid the Big Dollars to boldly suggest they join the brave new social order.  But who wants to follow their bank on Twitter?  Wells Fargo is NOT my friend.  I have zero interest in “following” anything but my bank statement, and I only do that so I can root out unfair and rapacious fees – of which there are many at Wells Fargo.

Oh – and their Twitter account, irritatingly, isn’t “WellsFargo,” or some such.  It’s “Wachovia.”  Really?  Do tell.

Yes, I am aware of the merger.  But as a customer, how is having to remember to follow “Wachovia” rather than “Wells Fargo” anything more than another galling little annoyance, the kind in which that fine institution already specializes?  It’s just – feh.  You guys merged.  Not my problem.  Try and be a trace more accessible if you want my slavish devotion.

But mostly I am foaming at the mouth about this because — it’s a BANK, people.  Am I wrong, or is Twitter a “social networking” tool?  Do I really want to clog up my limited mental bandwidth with supercilious adverts and bank-related trivia from an avaricious lending (but only if you have impeccable credit) institution?  And if so, why?

I typed www.twitter.com into my browser just now, to find out how many folks actually follow Wells Fargo – oops, Wachovia! – and was on the page for nanoseconds before I found this Tweet:

tamayers: Companies with awesome customer service: Newegg, Bluemic, Apple, BofA. Companies with the worst customer service: Dell, Wachovia, Amazon.

HAW HAW HAW!  And hah!  Hoist with your own petard, dudes.