Keepin' it Fresh

The FoodSaver conference room was tense. Nobody knew why the emergency meeting had been called except that it involved “a failure in marketing.”

Finally, Richard, the sixty year old exec who’d sent out the invite, arrived.

“Folks, we’ve got problems,” he said. “Our prized product, the Vacuum Sealing System, is being used for things other than saving food. Which is bad, because that’s our name. One thing they’re using it for is something called ‘Sous vide,’ which I believe is a religion, so we’ll want to be very careful there. But the other thing is–” Richard looked around, and spoke in a hushed tone–“they’re using it for marijuana.”

“They smoke through the machine?” asked Terry, age fifty-two.

“That’s what I thought at first,” Richard said. “But it turns out it’s more for storage and keeping it fresh. Anyway, there’s a whole bunch of people doing it. I found a message board where everyone was snap-chatting about it. The Red Edit.”

“It’s called Reddit,” said the intern, age twenty-one. “It’s the ‘trees’ subreddit.”

“Nope, that’s not it,” said Richard. “It’s definitely not about trees. Your generation wouldn’t understand because your Woodstocks were different. Anyway, we need to cash in on this, and we need to cash in on this NOW. We need a marketing campaign. Something to appeal to the youth.”

“But you just said my generation–”

“Quiet, intern. The adults are talking. Now, let’s spitball a little. What do we got?”

“What if,” said Tony, age fifty-eight, “we do one of those internet pictures and then make it go viral?”

“I like that,” Richard said. “That’s a good plan: a viral internet picture.”

“I’ve seen one particular internet picture,” said Harry, age fifty-eight, “where there’s a man pointing at a butterfly. The man will be labeled, and the butterfly will be labeled, but the man will be saying, ‘Is this a something-other-than-butterfly?’”

“Because it’s labeled as something else,” Richard said.

“No,” said Harry. “I should’ve mentioned that too. He doesn’t call it what it’s labeled, either. He calls it something else. I believe that’s part of the joke.”

“Okay, so,” said Terry, “we label the butterfly ‘FoodSaver’ and the man as ‘consumer’ and he’s asking: ‘Is this a thing for storing my reefer?’”

“Ganja,” said Tony. “Let’s say ‘ganja.’”

“Good catch,” said Richard. “We need to use relevant terms.”

“Also, underneath the question,” said Harry, “it should say, ‘Yes, and you can has it!’”

“That’s with the cat, right?” Richard said.

“No,” Terry said. “Cat says, ‘hang in there.’”

“Well, this has been very productive,” said Richard. “Good work, team. I’ll send this along to the design department. I’ll tell them to redraw the image in case there’s a copyright issue and to get us twelve potential samples by this afternoon.”

“You want the design department to make twelve images in a few hours?” asked the intern.

“Yes,” said Richard.

“But how?”

“They have computers,” Richard said. “It’s easy. And anyway, I don’t tell them how to do their jobs. Until I do. Now, intern, didn’t I put you on a special office sustainability project? I thought you kids love that stuff.”

“You asked me to photocopy a blank piece of paper as a way of saving paper,” said the intern, “but that doesn’t actually make any sense.”

“Look, do you want the college credit or not?”

The intern sighed. “Fine.”