To Slam Our Thirst
Grim Rosary responds to my post last week about Nestle Quik's new ad campaign:
"I don't know if this is a correction, exactly, but I've been working for years with a client who was the open quotation brand architect close quotation for Starbucks, overseeing their Napoelonic expansion and the defense and protection of their brand identity. "Slam" is a word that has
been somewhat of a term of art in the soft drink arena for half a dozen years or so. Originally it came from the fast food and 24-hour markets who would promise an instant end to thirst by offering larger and ever larger drink portion cups. To slam our thirst, you see. The 32oz would give way to the 48oz, the 72oz, and on and on. The "slam" concept so infected the industry that it reached the Pacific NW precincts of Starbucks HQ, eventually bringing about the Mad-magazine-ish elimination of the Small size, offering now only the customer-fooling Tall for small, Grande for medium, and Venti for large. That was not, however, enough for a young marketing hiree, a recent refugee from the Cola Wars. She came to the Starbucks marketing table with the idea for the ultimate coffee slam: "The Coffee Pig," a gallon-sized refillable tank with a snout nose. A coffee briefcase to fuel your morning. Not felt to be in keeping with the Starbucks spirit, we were spared this innovation.
"I don't know that the soft drink "slam" isn't still some cognate of that of the wrestling world."
Posted by B T at April 02, 2001 11:58 AM