You wouldn't normally put crack cocaine and breakfast food in the same basket. But thanks to a mix-up at cereal giant Kellogg's, the two have become synonymous.
The marketing monkeys behind the innocuous little chocolatey Kelloggs' Coco Pops thought they were on safe ground when they launched Coco Rocks, the exciting new jungle-inspired spin-off of the cereal. Unfortunately for them, they don't seem to have done their research among the highways, byways and alleyways of London's drug dens.
The new cereal brand launched in the UK earlier this year. But it has become an object of fun for drug-users and specialists. Coco Rocks to them means something very, very different - though, admittedly, it still has that nice chocolate overtone. The term is street slang for "dark brown crack cocaine made by adding chocolate pudding during production", according to the latest drugs guides available.
"You'd think people like Kelloggs would have teams of people checking new brand names out to see what they might mean," said a spokeswoman for leading drugs advice charity Drugscope, who's clearly been reading the same drugs guide as us. "Coco rocks is a term used to describe dark brown crack made by adding chocolate pudding during production. God knows why anyone would want to do that, but they do.
"It's logged in our library and has been around since at least 2003, so, I think Kelloggs might be getting a bit of a shock when they find out about it."
And indeed they did. Vicki Barton, a public relations spokeswoman for the cereal company, said the association was, "not funny - someone could lose their job over this."
The company was unwilling to answer any questions on the topic, including whether it would now consider a rebranding of the cereal, or whether it would examine the street drugs knowledge of its branding teams to find out whether there was any mischief behind the development of the new concept.
The company did however release a terse statement: "Kelloggs' Coco Pops Coco Rocks is a popular new cereal. The cereal contains chocolate-lined rock-shaped pillows [a technical term for a widened cereal flake shape]."
The dangers of double meanings
The Coco Rocks concept was initially launched outside the UK without mishap. But it follows in a long line of international brands which don't translate well to new markets. Like these that caught our fancy:
Spunk - Danish sweet bar
Zit Lemon-lime - Greek soft drink
Colon Plus Liquid - Spanish detergent
Polio - Czech detergent
Krapp - Swedish toilet paper
Homo Sausage Beef jerky - Japan
Mucos - Japanese soft drink
Pansy - Chinese men's underwear
Fockink - Dutch liqueur
Pshitt - French soft drink
Read Dave Green's review of Coco Rocks.
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I'd rather have a bowl of... crack?
Kellogg's might have made a slight error in their new product's name, writes Con Doherty
The London Line
Thursday 23 June 2005
Link
The marketing monkeys behind the innocuous little chocolatey Kelloggs' Coco Pops thought they were on safe ground when they launched Coco Rocks, the exciting new jungle-inspired spin-off of the cereal. Unfortunately for them, they don't seem to have done their research among the highways, byways and alleyways of London's drug dens.
The new cereal brand launched in the UK earlier this year. But it has become an object of fun for drug-users and specialists. Coco Rocks to them means something very, very different - though, admittedly, it still has that nice chocolate overtone. The term is street slang for "dark brown crack cocaine made by adding chocolate pudding during production", according to the latest drugs guides available.
"You'd think people like Kelloggs would have teams of people checking new brand names out to see what they might mean," said a spokeswoman for leading drugs advice charity Drugscope, who's clearly been reading the same drugs guide as us. "Coco rocks is a term used to describe dark brown crack made by adding chocolate pudding during production. God knows why anyone would want to do that, but they do.
"It's logged in our library and has been around since at least 2003, so, I think Kelloggs might be getting a bit of a shock when they find out about it."
And indeed they did. Vicki Barton, a public relations spokeswoman for the cereal company, said the association was, "not funny - someone could lose their job over this."
The company was unwilling to answer any questions on the topic, including whether it would now consider a rebranding of the cereal, or whether it would examine the street drugs knowledge of its branding teams to find out whether there was any mischief behind the development of the new concept.
The company did however release a terse statement: "Kelloggs' Coco Pops Coco Rocks is a popular new cereal. The cereal contains chocolate-lined rock-shaped pillows [a technical term for a widened cereal flake shape]."
The dangers of double meanings
The Coco Rocks concept was initially launched outside the UK without mishap. But it follows in a long line of international brands which don't translate well to new markets. Like these that caught our fancy:
Spunk - Danish sweet bar
Zit Lemon-lime - Greek soft drink
Colon Plus Liquid - Spanish detergent
Polio - Czech detergent
Krapp - Swedish toilet paper
Homo Sausage Beef jerky - Japan
Mucos - Japanese soft drink
Pansy - Chinese men's underwear
Fockink - Dutch liqueur
Pshitt - French soft drink
Read Dave Green's review of Coco Rocks.
---------------------------------------------------------
I'd rather have a bowl of... crack?
Kellogg's might have made a slight error in their new product's name, writes Con Doherty
The London Line
Thursday 23 June 2005
Link
