General Mills

September 14th, 2011

Dear General Mills,

I have been meaning to write this letter for a while now, but I was so devastated by your actions that I needed to take an emotional sabbatical from life.

I am writing in regards to your “Celebrate the Summer! Choose Your Free Beach Towel” promotion as on specially marked boxes of General Mills cereal brands. The box that I purchased was your Reece's Puffs brand.

A few weeks ago, I went to LifeMadeDelicious.ca/FreeTowel in order to enter the code found inside my box. I was really excited as I was contemplating which towel I would choose and receive for free in the mail. In fact, your Free Towel promotion is what drove me to purchase your brand of cereal over another one, so good job on the marketing promotion! However, much to my dismay, when I went to your website, I was informed that all free towels had been claimed and I was out of luck. And consequently I was not able to celebrate my summer at all. I was forced to sit uncomfortably in the sand whilst everyone around me enjoyed the pleasures and comfort of their own beach towels. Have you ever had a sand rash?

Was I really out of luck? I mean, your fine print for the promotion says that 350,000 towels are available to give away. It also says that the offer expires on October 30^th, 2011. Wait a minute, let’s back track... THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND towels were available!?!?! That is larger than the population of the city that I live in! That is 1% of the population of this beach-infested country! And considering that old people, who make up 97.5% of the population, don’t go to the beach very often, I definitely should have had my chance at getting my own beach towel! How then, can it be possible that every single last towel, all THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND had been claimed well over a month before your offer expired? This just does not make any sort of sense whatsoever. You would think that to give every willing person, who specifically bought a box of your cereal SPECIFICALLY to get a free towel would be given an equal opportunity to do so. The only way that this perfect situation is not possible is if you knowingly printed THOUSANDS of extra boxes with the promotion on it in order to cash in as much as you could on one-time sales from people such as myself, without having to pay the money to have extra towels created (talk about run-on sentences!).

Now, I realize that not every single person will claim a towel, and thus you are forced to print a few extra promotional boxes. From my calculations, approximately twelve people will not claim towels. Therefore, you should have only printed twelve extra boxes and not millions of extra boxes, knowing that those millions of people will be caught in the trap of wanting a free towel but not getting one. Therefore, you should have printed exactly 350,012 promotional boxes and everyone would have been happy.

I was even at the grocery store a few weeks ago and saw a mother with two young children examining another one of your cereal brands with the towel promotion on it. Her five year old son said, “Mamma! I want the Cheerios towel, because I love the Cherrios brand and everyone as General Mills is a good and wholesome person!” How could you expect me to just stand there and watch this family be torn apart by your deceiving promotion? I politely informed the mother that I too had been led astray by the promotion and that there were in fact no towels left to be given out. Thankfully, I averted a terrible divorce for this family because they were so broken about not receiving their free towel. Subsequently, the mother put the box of cereal back on the shelf and taught her children that General Mills is a company not to be trusted with its products and that as they grow up, they should never buy General Mills brands. Her son then said “Mamma, I was wrong about General Mills, and am I ever so disappointed. When I get older and have children of my own, I will also warn them about the follies of General Mills promotions.” (or something along those lines) My heart was truly touched.

Anyways, long story short, I find it ridiculous that you ran out of towels nearly two months before the offer expiry date and you still kept specially marked boxes with the towel promotion on shelf in order to capitalize on gaining the most sales from this promotion. It is even more ridiculous that you supposedly made available 350,000 towels and yet you still ran out of towels half way through the summer. Your marketers will pull AC Neilson reports and see that your sales figures increased over the promotional period and your Brand Managers will say, “Excellent, we shall fraud our consumers again in a similar way next summer because we LOVE money!” and they will receive excellent reviews from Senior Management and everything for General Mills will be hunky dory! And millions of Canadians across the country will be towel-less, not being able to celebrate their summers with free beach towels.

In conclusion, I expect a speedy response from the appropriate Brand Manager, asking for my address in order to ship me a free towel (I would like the Cheerios one, it is the coolest!).

Ok, thanks!

Sincerely,

Terry Ibele

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Dear Terry,

Thank you for taking the time to share your detailed comments about our free towel offer. 

As you noted, General Mills highlighted to consumers, both on-pack and on our website, that the quantity of towels was limited.  It was also highlighted that the offer is”good while quantities last or until October 30, 2011, whichever comes first.”  This promotion proved to be very popular with consumers and all 350,000 towels were redeemed very quickly.

If you would like to discuss the matter further, please feel welcome to contact me, toll-free, at 1-877-776-0770, extension 8023 at your leisure.  You may be assured, Terry, that your comments have been shared with the appropriate General Mills personnel, so as to be considered in the planning of future offers.

Thank you for your interest in this promotion.

Sincerely,

Denise
Consumer Services
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CONCLUSION: Shmeh, I didn't really think it was worth it to call consumer services at my leisure. 

Crest White Strips

June 29th, 2011
Dear Crest White Strips.


I recently watched one of your commercials featuring the advertising of Crest White Strips. In said commercial, an Actress, who is portrayed as a Professional Photographer, recommends that her clients use Crest White Strips in order to whiten their smiles prior to a photo shoot. It appears that the sole point of the commercial is to convey that the ‘Professional Photographer’, is giving her ‘professional opinion’ that Crest White Strips are her first choice for her clients to enhance the whiteness of their smiles. As a viewer of the commercial, I am lead to believe that actual ‘Professional Photographers’ actually recommend Crest White Strips. As I am not a ‘Professional Photographer’, I have to trust the opinion of the ‘Professional Photographer’ as presented in the commercial, because it is a ‘professional’ opinion (professional judgements are 100% accountable in court cases, mind you). I do not know how much more clear I can be that the commercial features the ‘professional’ opinion of a ‘Professional Photographer’, true?


Now with all that being said, as the actress says, “I’m a Professional Photographer...”, in captions on the bottom of the screen appear the words, “Actress, not a Professional Photographer.” Ok, stop. Hold up a minute. Let me get this straight. The entire point of the commercial was to create a scenario (which appears to be realistically portrayed as it is very candidly shot), where a Professional Photographer looks at the audience and givers her professional judgement on the valuation of Crest White Strips’ performance. But all of a sudden, you threw in that curve ball of caption to ensure the viewer knows that the ‘Professional Photographer’ who is so deliberately claiming that she is a ‘Professional Photographer’ is not actually a ‘Professional Photographer’, thus rendering whatever she says as a blatant untruth.


So now let me understand what you are trying to convey. You hired an actress to pretend to be a Professional Photographer and pretend to give a professional review so that you could make her say what you want? Can Professional Photographers not act? I’m sure out of the 150 Professional Photographers that live in North America, at least one of them took Drama Class in High School.


Now you may be responding with, “Well, we had to find a face that portrayed the Professional-Photographer-look that our target audience might link with Professional Photographers.” But wouldn’t it have just been simpler to hire a Professional Photographer? At least you would have avoided this extremely wordy complaint letter. Better yet, why didn’t you just hire a Professional Actress, who gives her professional opinion of Crest White Strips? I can see it all – “Hi, I’m a Professional Actress (caption on bottom of screen reads actual Professional Actress), and as a Professional Actress, my professional opinion of Crest White Strips is that they make my teeth whiter, which is preferable to my professional career as a Professional Actress.” There! Wasn’t that easy? And you avoided any creation of fake scenarios, where the Actress has to lie in order to get your point across. Also, if you’re wondering, I am currently available to work in your creative development department; I’ll forward my resume to you for your future reference.


Now that I know for sure that Professional Photographers definitely do not endorse Crest White Strips, I wonder what other professions do not also endorse it. Do Professional Airline Stewardesses not endorse Crest White Strips? Do Professional Zoo Keepers not endorse Crest White Strips? Do Professional Brand Managers not endorse Crest White Strips? I think you could run a whole campaign with different professionals, who all say, “I am a Professional (insert profession)...” then in captions below them, you could revoke their claims with “Actress, not an actual Professional (insert profession). Just think of all the different professionals you could feature! Professional Odour Testers, Professional Crocodile Wranglers and Professional Fountain Pen Repairmen could all be featured in your commercials through false representation!


Continuing on (I’m surprised you got this far), how now am I to trust any of the claims that you make within your commercials? Should I be constantly checking the fine print on your commercials, in case any claims you make are actually untrue? Overall, if you didn’t get what I was trying to oh-so-humbly say, it was this: Why would you make someone claim so blatantly what they are, when in captions it says that they aren’t who they are? Take a few minutes to read that one through to make sure you got everything. It’s just plain silly! And now I’ve lost faith in what you claim your product does and who recommends it. Seriously Crest White Strips, you honestly thought you could slip this one by?


I expect a prompt response from your Marketing Team. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,


Terry Ibele

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June 30th, 2011


Thanks for your email, Terry. 
Wow, that is a good point! We rely heavily on consumer comments regarding our advertisements, and feedback like yours will help us decide how to approach future advertising efforts. Please be assured I'm letting our Marketing Team know how you feel. 
Thanks again for writing.
Paul
Crest Team

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CONCLUSION: Awwwwwww yeah!