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F*** You, Talking Smoothies
Whimsical tales of antioxidant bullshit and covering your van in grass doesn't hide the fact you're a multi-millionaire. Stop pretending you're my friend and admit you're just after my money.
There are two kinds of companies in this world. Heartless multinationals who leave you on hold in India for 5 hours and fleece you with hidden charges, and hippy capitalists who make smoothies that say things like: ‘Hi, I’m made of goji berries and pinecones, please hug me.’
Well, I know which I hate more. I would rather be murdered by a disgruntled Virgin Media broadband technician than have to suffer the faux homespun pish of those little friendly companies that are actually huge. Well I’ve got news for you, you granola-breathed bastards, YOU ARE NOT MY FRIEND. You are the MAN. Here are the worst culprits…
Innocent
It was Innocent who started all this cutesy ‘product as sentient being’ crap. Innocent are like a needy, fruit-obsessed ex that won’t leave you alone. They just want to talk about antioxidants all day, and how good they are for you, and how much fun would it be if we all wore little woolly hats? Why don’t we go camping this weekend? Why won’t you return my calls? I’m made of fruit! Hello? Hello? If you have a complaint, you are directed to Fruit Towers, an HQ we are encouraged to imagine is made of fucking raspberries or something, full of people who just want to make our tummies full of nice tasty things. Deep down though, you just know it’s a dreary office like any other, populated by ambitious marketing people called Jocasta who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.
He’s off buying himself a diamond house, while you go to the church hall playgroup looking like a middle-aged frump.
Boden
Rich drunk housewives everywhere love a bit of Boden, and to encourage them to wrap their matronly jugs in loud polka dots and overpriced cashmere cardigans, founder Johnnie Boden has a ‘strategy’. He sends them self-deprecating personalised emails pretending he’s just an ordinary guy and not the millionaire best friend of David Cameron with a huge clothing empire and warehouses full of Breton tops in plastic wrappers. An email from Johnnie usually goes something like this. ‘Hello Mrs Boggins, I know I’m a bit annoying, but you’re so lovely I want to give you £10 off. It might not make much of a difference as all my clothes cost £189, but we all really think you’re special.’ By the end of it, you’re pals. You expect he’s waiting outside in his vintage jalopy, ready to take you to Whitstable. Is he fuck. He’s off buying himself a diamond house, while you go to the church hall playgroup looking like a middle-aged frump.
Dorset Cereals
Nobody likes muesli, especially not smug middle-class muesli. Of course, Dorset Cereals aren’t just muesli, they’re a lifestyle – a lifestyle that’s hard on the bowels. To distract you from the fact that you’re eating grit with a few hazelnuts in it, Dorset Cereals feign cosy friendliness and honesty, promising you lovely things and prize draws to win a reconditioned camper van, so you can tour slowly around the country being a dick. Their current competition is right on the money for any pretentious aspiring Mumford with a crap bowler hat and a trust fund. You can win a Gypsy caravan so you can do your big muesli shites in the great outdoors and then get moved on by the police for being the useless fake hippy that you are. Just eat some corn flakes and get a job, you twats.
Pret A Manger
Pret A Manger has an annual turnover of 380 million pounds a year and 265 branches worldwide, but that doesn’t stop them from pretending they’re still a little North London sandwich shop. And look, here are some pictures of knitted spaghetti and a cucumber with a face! And the napkins talk to you! And they’ve got bottles of juice that are called things like Yoga Bunny Detox and Vitamin Volcano – cool, eh? Just don’t mention the fact that they’re owned by McDonalds. Also, don’t get a filter coffee from there, unless you want to pretend you’re sucking the bitter insole of a Columbian navvy.
Still, maybe one day, we’ll live in a better, more well-adjusted world. A world where bottles of juice will tell us to fuck off, and breakfast cereal boxes will detail all our shortcomings in a quirky font. Until that day, here’s a word of advice. Next time your smoothie asks you to recycle it, tell it it’s a wanker. Then drink some Fanta and throw the bottle into the road. That’ll learn ‘em.
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COMMENTS
I love Dorset Cereals and Innocent Smoothies. Although this still made me laugh.
That'll do for us, Sweet! Here at Bark pamphlet we actively dissuade morons and mooners. Probably why we're all fackin' skint. Onwards!
Lush? Don't forget those little blighters...
I see not even Mark can defend Boden. (I quite like Innocent drinks too. Good for a hangover.)
I buy stuff from Lush as well. Maybe my fury would be ignited if I actually saw adverts for this stuff, but the only one of these I can remember seeing an advert for was Innocent, and that was months ago.
Loved Lucy's stuff, but Mcdonald's did stop owning any of Pret three years ago.
Macdonalds sold Pret in 2008, still hate them, but just saying, like.
You didn't mention that Pret put avocado in EVERYTHING. Even their cheesecakes. I LOLed at 'bitter insole of a Columbian navvy'.
Innocent (soon to be owned majority by Coca Cola) get right on my tits. Fruit Towers is the most contrived space on the planet. As if Hitler said to Albert Speer "ve are not cool enough, design me a cool building".
You've missed out White Stuff ("Happiness in every stitch") with their cute price tags saying things like "You found me!"
Oh, and my penniless student daughter entered the Dorset Cereals "win a gypsy caravan" comp last year and won a 2nd prize of… £500 of Boden clothes! Result! She got to splash out in the London Boden shop, pretending she was someone who could afford it! I think Ben & Jerry's started the "we're bezzie mates" wheeze, actually, sounding like they'd harvested every brazil nut for their Chunky Monkey ice-cream themselves. Very funny artice, thanks!
Ah yes, Lush: annual turnover near the quarter billion pound sterling mark, but via cute stickers on every package, likes to make out that its products are handmade by a team of young, funky people no larger than the Peanuts gang. Did you know they encourage people looking for work there to write their job application in the form of a poem? My theory is, if you pull back the curtain on their ethical operation, you'll find a giant Amazonian bug chained up like an Queen Alien, getting the electric cattle prod treatment if it doesn't shit out huge bars of Trichomania on command.
Try Howies - fell for their marketing bollocks only to find out most of their stuff is made in China along with a tie in to Timberland which they don't like to mention. Skateboarding, cycling earth saving tossers - if they want to save the planet start by using Welsh wool instead of New Zealand wool shipped to China and then shipped here!At least with multinationals you know they are after your money - they know they aren't your best mate. I don't mind companies being successful just stop treating us like fucking idiots!
Yes Wendy, I agree. White Stuff = clothes for UTTER, UTTER cunts!
Hey, I've got a White Stuff shirt. Admittedly, "I found you!" going for £4 from Oxfam - you'd have to be a special kind of fuckwit to pay the original £47 asking price, I don't care how chummy the labelling is...
Easy now. Nice knitwear at White Stuff. Where do your clothes come from, David B? I want to judge you on your appearance. Come on, it's only fair. PS Do pret really have only 265 branches? I think you've missed a zero.
Alas,David B, I bought a White Stuff shirt in spite of the pally label (or was I taken in, after all? I don't know!). I don't like the addition of "your" in front of shop names in their marketing: "Your M&S", etc. Another patronising device to suggest we're nestling safe & secure under their protective corporate wing.
Wonderful stuff.
Delightful article.. and the comments equally amusing. Ahhh, I now think my day is complete.
Great article and very funny!
I have heard that Jocasta will piss on you, but only as a marketing ploy !
Great story. But Mcdonalds only ever held a 33% share in Pret which they sold in 2008. The majority of shares are now owned by Bridgepoint, a private equity firm. Who are even more evil than Mcdonalds.
Very funny article and equally witty comments. Bill Hicks summed it up perfectly by suggesting that anyone who works in marketing should 'go kill yourself'...
Hilaroius. Brillaint. I hayte this fucklin I plad. Shlit keyboarrrrdd. Laffed out lowd. More more more pleeze
Innocent are partly owned by Coke. I went for a job there once. Didn't get it. First part of rejection letter told me how lucky I should feel that I made it to interview stage when 100's of others didn't. Pretentious twats. you would have been lucky to have me!
Lucy, may I suggest you take a two week holiday in the Shetland Islands, away from everyone that irritates you, walking that wild and rugged landscape in rarified air, filling your lungs with the freshest air in the British Isles! Once you've managed that you will find that companies, which take a fresh approach to marketing, whilst still successful, may actually amuse you whilst they take money of someone else ;-) ...
Great article, all that marketing bull is cunt fodder, they fucking deserve everything they get, wankers! Boden, fuck me!!!
and LEON. Don't forget LEON. Hate LEON. Great work Lucy!
I f-ing love this article. Well done, Lucifer!
Just remembered my daughter's blog entry when the Toast and Boden catalogues arrived at our house on the same day last year: Boden man vs Toast man: http://journo86.blogspot.com/2010/09/boden-man-toast-man-and-boast-catalogue.html
I am crying with laughter - could not have said it better myself - especially Boden!
Yep agree - Who invented all this "lifestyle" crap anyway. Hands up who loves being patronised by Chefs, Celebrities, Health & Fitness guru's, sporto's and politicians.
absolutely brilliant
Where is Jack Willis on your rant?!
Hey, won't hear a word against Jack Wills. The fact that you're paying £100 bollocks for a shirt that traditional public schoolers got in a jumble sale is irrelevant - every time I enter the shop I'm greated by Tamara in hooker-small hot pants. My main gripe is that the sales assistants seem more concerned in trying to shag each other than selling anything. Which is fair enough when you've got eight posh camel toes folding jumpers.
Yeah a couple of quid for a smoothie that has about 20p's worth of fruit in it! They haven't pulled the wool over my eyes. To be fair though Pret do go out and give whats left over to the homeless and don't really bang on about it.
Top marks, Lucy! I lolled several times, especially about Dorset cereals, and will never buy another fucking thing from Boden. Friends with Call Me Dave! VOM.
Very very funny. Love it. I speak as a muesli fan. Innocent smoothies - boy are they a rip off!
In my opinion, what I read today in the Observer was definitely born out of this fantastic piece - albeit one which had been regurgitated, bastardised, stripped bare and brutally raped of its most winning elements: charm, relatability, endearing funniness and a shardlike wit. It was a pitiful shadow of it's former self, and so badly done, I even began to wonder if it was one of her first drafts. Honest to God, even if I were comparing the two articles whilst drunkenly riding a rodeo bull I'd STILL be able to spot the similarities. Obviously you're dealing with a tricky character here. Someone who's unlikely to feel shame. Someone who'll be unshakably convinced they're removed from any wrong-doing. Someone who'll actually believe they're clever enough to pull the wool over everyone's eyes if they just continue on with some "this was an original idea" subterfuge. You're quite up against it with someone like that but I'm confident that common sense and higher morals will prevail. And talking of rodeos, there's very little point in cowboys trying to impress everyone with how skilled they are when there's a very pungent smell of bullshit in the air.
Very funny.Confess to liking the smoothies.Draw the line at Dorset cereals. though.
this was fcking funny my friend
I went to school with one of the founders of Innocent - he was a cunt then and its nice to see becoming the head of a company that sells you mashed up fruit ain a plastic bottle hasn't changed him a bit - apart from making him a millionaire - cunt
Brilliant piece! Do Pedlars annoy anyone else or just me? Their "Stuff we love, that you'll love too" (a tad arrogantly presumptuous?) strap line really gets on my tits.
How soon before we have a 'middle' class war in this country? I can see it now, factions of body warmer bandits fighting each other over problems that aren't really problems; like why can't they send Archie and Noah to the right school, why the parking spaces in Waitrose aren't big enough, or why it IS acceptable to call your parents "Mummy" and "Daddy" when you're 40. Give me working class values all day, oh wait..
Richard fucking Branson. A billionaire still claiming to be the little man fighting the establishment.
Whats the attraction of smoothies every flavour just tastes like a banana, So buy a fucking banana and save yourself a fortune.
Your catharsis is complete and we all feel so mch better for it
Innocent Towers or whatever the fuckwits that work there call it is down the road from me. I often look up at the twatty egg chairs suspended from the ceiling and think to myself, 'what a barrel of cunts'.
"You expect he’s waiting outside in his vintage jalopy, ready to take you to Whitstable. Is he fuck. He’s off buying himself a diamond house, while you go to the church hall playgroup looking like a middle-aged frump." Genius. This article is top stuff.
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