i still hate millennial branding

and it still never dies

(Previously.)

There’s a dried fruit brand I’ve been seeing around, the premise of which is: we use ugly fruit. You might say “isn’t the premise of a ‘dried fruit brand’ ‘this is dried fruit’” but really, in this case, no, I have to insist, it’s that the fruit is ugly. Every bag says “HELLO! I’M UGLY!” They really want you to know this.

Now I’ve been around the food product branding rodeo long enough to know that stressing the hideousness of your fruit is about food waste. Basically the world is full of perfectly respectable carrots that are fours on the produce beauty scale, and these carrots never get a shot at love because you overlook them in favor of perfectly symmetrical vegetables. I used to buy groceries from a place that specialized in this because it cost less. You can really go down the rabbit hole about food waste and some people seem to think it’s a fake problem because all the ugly fruits and vegetables still have uses. About this I have no opinion but I certainly assume …