Tonight we dine on oats.
IN HELL
just glorious.
Two things I love about this:
- They were so committed to this prank that they created a REAL ad (even a fake ad is real if you pay people to make it) and ordered THREE TONS of oats to really sell it.
- Cards Against Humanity can afford to purchase THREE TONS of oats, plus packaging and advertising for said oats, just for a lark. That’s SIX THOUSAND POUNDS of oats. Plus the logistics of packing said SIX THOUSAND POUNDS of oats into ONE HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND little packets. It boggles my mind that the business of selling novelty cards, which they also GIVE AWAY FOR FREE LITERALLY ALL THE TIME (literally - all the time, on their website), affords them the ability to do this; but good for them! I guess.
My dream to create the illusion of an extreme oatmeal brand so convincingly that people would throw their packets out, and then go digging in the trash for them later when they realized that there were Cards Against Humanity cards inside.
See, my reaction would be the other way around.
Except, uh, without the trash-digging.
Do kids still say pwn? I remember that word from like… 1999? Also, N-zero-zero-B?
Extreme Gaming Oatmeal… I like that idea. Instead of water, use Mountain Dew: Code Red!
It’s very awesome, but it wasn’t all done “just for a lark.” Cards Against Humanity is the success that it is because of word of mouth, particularly from places like PAX, and because of the echo-effect of that word-of-mouth on all the blogs like these ones.
They say they didn’t want it to feel like viral advertising, but (in the best possible way) of course it was viral advertising. They made a splash and got a lot of people happy and talking, and repeating the story on the blogs. Want to buy a pack now?
Hahahahaha. I went to Pax East and I still hadn’t gotten around to going through my bag of crap and throwing most of it out. The PWNMeal was definitely in the list of something to throw out.
Guess I need to open it up before I chuck it.
I went to PAX East, and I thought the oatmeal idea was very creative. It’s hard in this day and age to get people talking about your product, and this campaign was a great accomplishment. However, I work for a Boston non-profit that serves many people who are homeless, or on the edge of homelessness, and it pained me to see how much food was wasted. Many people took packets, then immediately threw them out not knowing a card was inside, and others opened the packet, took out the cards, then tossed the oatmeal. It would have been nice to come up with a way to either donate the food, or a different idea that didn’t waste food at all.
I believe I was the oldest person at PAX East, but I’m not sure if I should be proud or ashamed.
The oatmeal was quite tasty.
Probably not.
The demographic appeared to be heavily weighted to the 14-to-38 age bracket, but I didn’t take any surveys.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
