World's greatest fries and population control
September 25th 2006 21:17
If you order large chips from Maccas in Sydney, and you look at the side of the packaging, it'll say something like "World's greatest fries (TM)", and the lettering will be in a sort of jaunty, casual script suggesting upbeatness, youthfulness, good times and fun.
Now, that apparently casual writing has presumably been the object of a lot of care and thought. At a minimum, there would have been a number of different designs reviewed by a marketing team and various levels of management. But one might think also of the surveys, the discussions among focus groups divided by age, gender, income bracket, spending habits, the one-on-one interviews, the psychologists, the experts.
And what about the ongoing monitoring of results. Has the change in design in fact resulted in increased sales? Is there a quantifiable difference? -- There's someone somewhere watching and calculating.
This is all speculation of course, but to me that apparently natural script is an example of the sort of insidious population control that goes on all around us. A lot of thought and effort has gone into manipulation, into the slightest factor that might give a corporation an edge.
Other contexts are similar. Acting and writing are often much harder than they look. The whole point is naturalness, but oh what unnatural pains to get there.
Conversely, some apparently difficult activities are much easier than they might look. Comedians might be incomprehensibly funny ("That guy is amazingly talented"), until you realize all the behind the scenes stuff. -- Russell Peters takes a year to write an hour's worth of material; and he no doubt tests it, bit by bit, in smaller clubs; and what a let down to see him tell a joke in exactly the same way, over and over and over again -- the magic disappears -- you grasp the hours of repetition and practice.
And beauty is similar -- the cover girl on a magazine. The image can be awe-inspiring. But if men only realized all the makeup and angles and lighting and doctoring of photographs...
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article McDonald's.
Now, that apparently casual writing has presumably been the object of a lot of care and thought. At a minimum, there would have been a number of different designs reviewed by a marketing team and various levels of management. But one might think also of the surveys, the discussions among focus groups divided by age, gender, income bracket, spending habits, the one-on-one interviews, the psychologists, the experts.
And what about the ongoing monitoring of results. Has the change in design in fact resulted in increased sales? Is there a quantifiable difference? -- There's someone somewhere watching and calculating.
This is all speculation of course, but to me that apparently natural script is an example of the sort of insidious population control that goes on all around us. A lot of thought and effort has gone into manipulation, into the slightest factor that might give a corporation an edge.
***
Other contexts are similar. Acting and writing are often much harder than they look. The whole point is naturalness, but oh what unnatural pains to get there.
Conversely, some apparently difficult activities are much easier than they might look. Comedians might be incomprehensibly funny ("That guy is amazingly talented"), until you realize all the behind the scenes stuff. -- Russell Peters takes a year to write an hour's worth of material; and he no doubt tests it, bit by bit, in smaller clubs; and what a let down to see him tell a joke in exactly the same way, over and over and over again -- the magic disappears -- you grasp the hours of repetition and practice.
And beauty is similar -- the cover girl on a magazine. The image can be awe-inspiring. But if men only realized all the makeup and angles and lighting and doctoring of photographs...
***
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article McDonald's.
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