Market This!

CBS and Pepsi Cola are trying something new.

Pepsi is trying a new product, calling it the “first diet cola for men,” which we are guessing is just regular cola in a black can, unless it has liquid testosterone in it or something.

And CBS, after apparently not getting the memo that their ratings are supposed to blow, is trying a new tact of succeeding rather than failing, as evidenced by the high ratings of Big Brother, 60 Minutes, and Tiger Woods winning everything but the Tour de France.

But those aren’t the only new things these tired old corporate monoliths are trying. Next month, they’re running magazine ads with video and sound.

Isn’t that great?

Now when you open your EW in a quiet dentist’s office waiting room, you’ll be sure to start conversation (or at least, elicit judgmental stares) from the others awaiting their root canals, as dramatic scenes from CBS shows and the voice overs from manly cola ads blare indiscriminately from the pages.

The screens will be mobile-phone sized – hardly a Harry Potter Daily Prophet hologram, but it’ll do – and the ads will cost…well, nobody knows what they will cost. Or how many magazines will have them. Let’s just say Pepsi and CBS are doing very well.

Our guess: what will probably be billed as the Next Great Advance in Marketing will end up at the bottom of a landfill pretty quick. But maybe not before everyone tears the pages out and passes them around saying, “check this out, isn’t this cool?”

Which is maybe what these guys are betting on.

Let’s face it, how many times have we all attempted to wrap a towel around ourselves, only to throw our hands in the air in defeat and exclaim, “Damn you, towel, vile agent of confusion!”

Once in a great while, a product we’ve all used for ages with relative ease takes a quantum — and unnecessary — leap forward, changing the world forever. (See: iPhone.) Or, you know. Not changing it. (See: Segway.)

The latest innovation is the wearable towel by terrycloth visionary Zoni Stein. (Read the article in the Washington Post, and then check out the company’s website.)

Clearly, it’s an attempt to capitalize on our laziness as a society (the wearable blanket being such a raging success), and the only mistake Stein makes is not taking it far enough. An infomercial? Really? A $19.95 price point? Come on.

Make us really want this thing. Why limit it to boring around-the-house uses? Show people wearing it at trendy art openings or baseball games. Charge $75 for it. Have celebrities start wearing them on Rodeo Drive.

If you’re going to present this as something more revolutionary than a towel with three holes cut in it, you might as well go for broke.

Either way, know this: if you’re too dumb to know how to operate a towel, you deserve to look as stupid as you do wearing that ridiculous toga.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::