Cures All Sickness, Eliminates Pain

Bill pointed out the other day how ubiquitous the YouTube video contests are getting.

While over at Technorati, looking at who links here to the old Jetpack blog, I was attacked by a banner ad for POM's new video contest. You know POM, the pomegranate juice displayed in the fresh produce section that sells for just under the street price of heroin. They're calling for "aspiring directors" to create 90 second "films" showing "what you love most about POM tea." Unlike many of the contests out there, they're hosting it themselves instead of relying on YouTube. And they are so Super Social 2.0, with their own POM blog and a "Healthcare professionals" button at the bottom of all their sites, which is designed to trick you into believing that POM is the elixir of the gods, and you deserve to live forever. It's also there to get doctors to tell their patients that "the best way to get antioxidants is to buy a truckload of POM juice." If you read further on the "Healthcare Professionals" pages, they stop just short of claiming that POM juice cures cancer. ("Want to be a POMbassador™? We invite you to write us for educational materials, literature and workshop kits." Oh, quick! Trademark the name "POMbassador" before someone else grabs it!) They're even selling pomegranate centerpieces for the holidays. OH! Just found this...Join Club POM.

When I was in high school, a buddy of mine had a pomegranate tree in his backyard. We'd all eat them right off the tree when the munchies struck. Messy as hell. And I can see how making juice from pomegranates would be a tough job and require a lot of filtering, but not so hard that it makes a small bottle worthy of a $10 price tag. (Correction for Kym in the comments: It's $11 for 1.5 quarts.)

Excellent marketing job over at POM in the classic snake-oil sense. For the price they're asking for POM juice, I'm going to stick to good old water, the universal solvent.

Title of this post taken from the lyrics to "Where's My Jetpack?"