October 2008

Food firm hopes for no snack attack

There aren’t many occasions when Backchat’s jaw drops in the local supermarket, but this was certainly one of them: a wire display basket filled to the brim with a tasty new snack product called Crips.

Yes, that’s right. Crips.

Had they employed a design team who couldn’t spell? Or was it a deliberately offensive marketing wheeze aimed at securing column inches in the tabloids?

Happily, it seems, neither of the above. The team behind the new lower-fat potato/wheat-based product had come up with the name because, they said, it sounded like the way some young children pronounce the word “crisps”. They hadn’t a clue that the word might offend disabled people and had been more worried about links being made with the notorious LA street gang of the same name.

Indeed, Crips sales and marketing director Karl Traae told Backchat that the reaction from disabled people so far had been one of “bemusement and curiosity” rather than outrage.

“Obviously from our point of view there has never been any intention to offend or upset anyone with the name of our snacks, and we’re pleased that it doesn’t seem to be causing any offence.”

Fingers crossed, eh?

No card credit

Indeed, there was only one marketing wheeze that caused Backchat any upset or offence this month, and that was the receipt of a fundraising letter from the Cambridgeshire charity Red2Green, which enclosed – oh, dear God – a copy of their Christmas mail-order brochure.

It’s bad enough that summer lasted three days and ended in early May, without having the imminent arrival of cold, dark, bleak winter evenings crammed down your throat.