Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Lies, damn lies, and marketing

In a very round about way, I stumbled across a fellow food blogger in Dallas. At the end of 2006 he did a very compelling set of 10 postings about a luxury chocolatier called Noka once he realized that people spending 80 bucks on 4 tiny tiny pieces of chocolate were basically buying chocolate at the rate of $2000/lb. The story is a good read. I am way too lazy to endeavor such an investigative report on my blog, so I relish in delight when other people have done these things.

He discovers that Noka is all about marketing. The company uses words very cleverly to persuade people to pay a premium for a "luxury" chocolate that costs them about $11/lb. wholesale. In addition, the company saves expense by not having any true craftsmanship. Noka is selling a dream of the simple luxury of pure chocolate unencumbered by (gasp!) vanilla or (heaven forbid!) caramel.

The blogger would probably say that their marketing crosses the line of creative license into the realm of pretence and, I daresay, fraudulence.

Noka might say the blogger crosses the line of investigative journalism into the realm of calumny.

Either way, it is an entertaining read!

And I don't know about you but I'm not paying more money for a pound of chocolate than I spend on clothes in an entire year.

No comments: