Nature's pleasure

Anybody who frequents London during the week will no doubt be familiar with The London Lite and The London Paper - indeed, anybody who has ever been to London on a weekday will no doubt have been inundated with them at one point, such is the vociferousness with which they're thrusted upon you from all angles. Like with any free newspaper in a major city, these papers' sole sustenance comes in the form of on-page advertising - inordinate quantities at that, splashed around the actual "content" (big images and mostly fabricated, slightly libellous stories about celebrities).

With these papers, can't-get-away-from-it advertising covering the entire back page or front page is not uncommon, especially if there is little value in sensationalising the day's biggest headline. But sometimes adverts engage you less forcefully: perhaps they have a thoughtful or engaging message, or use some kind of gimmick to reel you in.

I guess the latter is what you could classify the advert that so assaulted my brain on the front cover of the edition of The London Paper that followed the death of Michael Jackson (Friday 26th June). This advertiser got lucky, I thought to myself, given the front page footer advert sitting just under the big "The World Mourns" headline which was sure to grab mildly more readers (can you call them 'readers' when the image to text ratio is so drastically high?). The advert simply said "We've". Eh? I looked around for a brand or bit of text copy to explain but there was none, and so with my curiosity piqued I investigated further. Slotted around more Wacko Jacko coverage on the following pages, the advert's slogan developed from just "We've" - "added," "something," "new to muesli."

That's right. Apparently, they've added something new to muesli, the oats, fruit and nut based cereal. What could that new thing be? I wondered - in such an economical climate innovation is rare as firms tend to avoid the risk, so a different nut or berry perhaps? Exciting times! With baited breath, I turned over the page...

Oh. 'Taste', apparently, the eventual full-page advert informed me. "We've added something new to muesli: taste." They - Kellogg's - have added taste to muesli. 'Taste.'

I tried to get away from this and turned to the sports headlines on the back cover, only to be pulled back, confronted and have the mantra shoved into my face once more, in full:

Somehow, according to Kellogg's, muesli in all it's forms - Alpen and all the other muesli brands that can take up significant portions of supermarket shelf space - has been surviving in the market on an appeal that in no way features taste. Apparently consumers have been electing to eat it presumably for pure nutritional value alone in the face of all the notoriously bad-for-you cereals that exist that give you liver disease and swine flu and cause impotence. You know, all the cereals with no nutritional value and the health warnings, that were so bad they had to ban them from being consumed in public enclosed areas and now companies are losing productivity because addicted employees have to take cereal breaks outside the office at regular intervals just to get their fix.

Oh, wait, that's not right is it? I remember now - there's a multitude of cereals with great nutritional value and even the worst offenders just have a little too much sugar. Like muesli.

So if muesli isn't the holy grail of nutritional cereals, then why does it sell and continue to sell? Because people like it - because it tastes good. The chain of logic isn't difficult to follow, so why Kellogg's ignored it in favour of presenting themselves as presumptuous idiots who can't follow such logic is beyond me.

So, politely, f*** off Kellogg's and f*** off Nature's Pleasure. Mix things up a little, sure, but don't be pricks about it. Michael Jackson was massively successful and popular as shown by the insufferable levels of press coverage since his death - did he go around saying "I'm gonna add something to Pop - TALENT!!" and f*** off all the other pop artists to get to where he was?

Alright, some might say breakfast cereals and the part of the music industry responsible for promoting and managing multi-millionaire artists with worldwide platinum-selling albums aren't really comparable. And they'd (probably) be right. But don't assume everyone else's opinions Kellogg's. You're wrong. And if you've based your entire product's concept on this massively erroneous, dim-witted logic then I wouldn't be surprised if Nature's Pleasure didn't end up being my pleasure after all: not for eating it - God no - but just for when the day comes that I notice this article again and realise - hey, I forgot about that s***ty cereal. Where is it now? I haven't seen it in ages? Ah.


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Kellogg's: "We've added something new to muesli!" - aimed at the unsatisfied muesli-sufferers, I'm guessing. Just how niche can a market be?