Heard a PR client recently utter, “Do we need to start a conversation with each and every person who says something about our brand online? Gosh, that’s going to take a lot of time”. This, after I’ve tried convincing them of the necessity of a formal social media engagement program – the ideas, numbers, plan of action, deliverables et all. That’s ok, I’ll convince them with some great examples of online chatter about their own brand. No sweat.
But, I had an epiphany this morning. Just before brushing. I had the urge to read what’s written on my Colgate toothpaste tube, while brushing. Its like the urge you get to peek into Tweetdeck while working on an important document – same feeling.
And what did I notice? There was actually a sentence that read,
‘For best results squeeze tube from the bottom and flatten as you go up’.
Except for the minor distraction about its possibly unintended dirty meaning, I had an epiphany. A toothpaste is supposed to clean your teeth; remove goo from gums (with the help of that other device, tooth brush); control bad breath…and so on.
So, perhaps, it would have been a lot more appropriate if Colgate (and other toothpaste brands around the world) had actually printed, ‘For best results, brush twice every day and after every meal’.
Isn’t that the ‘best result’ in question? Why bother about existential activities like squeezing the tube, when the objective of using the paste (and the tube, as a result) is completely something else?
Instead, they thought of the most obscene (hey, just a point of view!) and useless sentence which completely misses the point of the purpose of a toothpaste! Fascinating!
Photo courtesy: Tony the Misfit via Flickr.