As one who considers herself hard to be swayed by the endeavors of advertisers I have a sad admission to make.
I know full well that those in the advertising business play on our weakness. They hit us where it hurts and do their damnedest to sell us products we neither want nor need in all manner of nefarious ways. One only has to look at the sales figures the following day, for a product that has been nationally advertised on TV the the previous evening to see the success advertising has, or consider the vast sums spent on promoting an item to realise just how well it works. Despite all that I thought myself somewhat immune.........until yesterday!
There is currently an advertising campaign on UK television for a product called 'Oatso simple', this, as it's name suggests is a breakfast cereal made of oats, in fact it is hailed as a microwave version of porridge but available in a myriad of exciting flavours.
Ever lazy in the kitchen, when presented with this item in my supermarket I weakened and purchased a pack!
What did I find on opening said pack yesterday morning? Seven little packets of something very akin to porridge oats is what I found. Not to be offput I followed the instruction. This was even for me, with my limited interest in things culinary, not a challenge...... empty contents of small paper bag into bowl, add 180ml of semi-skimmed milk and microwave for two and a half minutes. Bingo!
What was the end result? A bowl of porridge, incidentally a very small bowl of porridge,...........nothing too strange about that perhaps but somehow I had expected something maybe a little different for the price.
What sat sadly in the bottom of my bowl was exactly the same stuff as I would have enjoyed had I bought an ordinary, run of the mill packet of porridge oats, added some milk and microwaved it, as I have on numerous occasions. There was one big difference, the price!! I would hate to consider the cost per kg for Oatso simple but I think it would be bordering on that of prime beef!
I was had, the advertisers did their bit and got me, they well and truly got me!
Friday, 22 October 2004
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7 Comments:
Shame, shame ,shame....LOL!
Did it perhaps have extra vitamens or something in it, interesting flavors that Quaker doesn't have, gold nuggets at bottom? Anything?
Rather like my children wanting the $4 box of cereal as opposed to the $2 box that I can't tell the difference, but there's a bribe in the advert somewhere!
Michelle: :oP, hehe
Scarlett: No gold nuggets in my bowl :o(
Jack: yes it is 'quacker' and you have a good point on the steak issue! lol
Don't you HATE when that happens!?!
Ya had a loooooong day at work, didnt ya hunny. Oatmeal. For years I fed Danno straight from the 80# bag of rolled horse oats, boiled for 10 minutes. Throw enuff brown sugar on em, the kid would eat em.
I have a box of Instant Quaker Oatmeal in the back of our cupboard... I think the back of the cupboard has taken on a life of it's own... kind of a time capsule effect... because this stuff will probably last until the end of time...but what I really like are the purple sparkles, except I want green ones.
Lisa: That looks very similar to the dastardly stuff I talked about! lol. We call it porridge here all the time, lol not just in Goldilocks :o)
Mags: Ugh @ work, 2 more days to go!
Deanna: I still can't find green sparkles, do you want the purple ones for now? :o)
True Willow: Yes I do, what a silly woman I am! lol
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