“Swear you’ve turned into Jeremy Clarkson or something.”
Such was the judgement of my mate Dan. And not entirely a fair one. I can’t drive, I don’t tuck my shirt into my jeans, and I’ve never spoken out against putting dog shit in the hats of Chelsea fans.
If anything, I’m massively in favour.
But that’s not what Dan was getting at.
His accusation was a response to a rant I was having. You see, on a warm, summer’s evening I’d decided to treat myself to an ice cream. That’s the benefit of 2023 - the amount of ice cream in the shops. Back in the 90s1, it was Cornetto (plain, strawberry, mint), Feast (chocolate, mint), or a mini tub of raspberry ripple.
But anyway. Tuesday evening and yours truly wants some ice cream. So off I walk to the Sainsbury’s Local. To their dedicated ice cream freezer. And what a choice was arrayed in front of me!
Magnums (salted caramel and popcorn flavour)
Häagen-Dazs (salted caramel flavour)
Ben & Jerry’s (unsalted caramel and marshmallow flavour)
Halo Top (salted caramel flavour)
Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference, Jude’s… (all salted caramel flavour, natch)
And so on, and so on. Any manufacturer of ice cream you could possibly want - as long as they made a salted caramel flavour.
Spoiled for choice. Unless, like me, you wanted mint choc chip…
It’s an illusion of choice. You step into that Sainsbury’s, you head to that ice cream fridge, and you think you’ve got options. But you haven’t. You’ve just got different opportunities to buy the one flavour of ice cream that’s most popular.
That’s the thing about going with a generalist supplier of any product or service. There’s thousands of options, but you’ll always end up with the exact same thing as everyone else.
All that changes is the name on the receipt.
If you really want something different, that’s when you need to find a specialist.
Something mint - this Magnum advert
Keeping on the ice cream theme, I’ve always liked a Magnum advert. Mainly because as a kid there was this TV ad that was clearly inspired by all the perfume selling flummery. The line was something like “it feels like slipping between silk sheets.”
Even as a kid, I cottoned on that Magnum adverts (and Cadbury flake ones) seemed to be mostly about innuendos, and my parents absolutely hated them. I remember my dad shouting at the telly one Sunday when the ad came on for the fifth time that day that “it’s just a fucking choc ice on a stick.”
Anyway, this print ad takes that Magnum innuendo message and runs with it. I’m going to email it to my dad, see if it winds him up.
If you’re older than I am and you’re reading this, you’re probably about to leave a comment ranting about how during rationing you had to have lukewarm white dogshit as a summer treat. Don’t bother. The age of millennial nostalgia is well and truly here.