When Your Brand is Synonymous with Suicide Cults

I enjoy visiting deeply partisan political blogs just to read the idiotic comments left on them by uninformed yet passionate voters. It's amazing that people with no knowledge of proper English usage, punctuation or grammar are so heavily involved this year in the political discourse. Everyone's got an opinion, but most of them are parroted from the commenter's favorite partisan radio or TV host.

Then the name calling begins. Hillary Haters refer to her as Hillabeans, Hildabeast, Shrillary, Hellery, Sillary and Hillarious, among other clever names. The Obama crowd are called Obamaniacs and Cultists while their candidate is mockingly referred to as "The Messiah." McCain is derided as Bush Jr, McSame and McBush.

And all camps call everyone who follows and supports anyone but their favorite candidate "Kool-Aid Drinkers." It has become the slur of the season. Drinking the Clinton Kool-Aid or the Obama Kool-Aid or the McCain Kool-Aid is to be a deluded fool with no sense of reason who would die for their misguided leader. The term comes from the Jonestown Massacre, where 900 devotees of Jim Jones drank poison-laced Kool-Aid in a mass suicide.

So I wondered how Kraft Foods and their maligned product were faring as their brand name is tossed about regularly as a synonym for "idiot," "fool," or "mindless drone."

So I went to the Kool-Aid site. Silly me. Kool-Aid is for kids. Kids aren't reading political blogs or watching talk TV. Kraft Foods probably enjoys the fact that their product's name is on the lips of so many Americans. They don't need to address this non-issue. They market straight to kids. The kids then tell their parents to buy it. And Kool-Aid's tagline, "Oh, Yeah!" is one of the coolest tags out there.

But Kraft Foods is doing some targeted kid marketing these days. The Kool-Aid website is all "street" with graffiti font. The once fat Kool-Aid guy is now slimmed down (because obesity is a problem and Kraft Foods cares about kids) and he's showing off his urban cred. All of his old schoolmates from "back in the day" are minorities. Check out his friend's "ride." He enjoys concerts and b-ball, naturally.

Kids are drinking the Kool-Aid.