It's not exactly the Pepsi Challenge.
A new teaser site, whoppervirgins.com, created by Crispin Porter Bogusky, claims to be the home of the world's "purest taste test."
Created on behalf of Crispin client Burger King, the site looks like it fell off the back of a National Geographic camel. It features people from remote Thai villages, deeper, darker Transylvania, and even the icy tundra of Greeenland.
These places were, apparently, chosen because burgers have never been seen or eaten there. In some cases, the people don't even know the word "burger." So, unlike every sad, biased human in the world, they are entirely unprejudiced when it comes to the difference between a Whopper and a Big Mac.
With a deep seriousness normally only reserved for political campaigns and dog food spots, the agency hired Stacey Peralta, director of the fine skateboarding movie Lords of Dogtown, to capture fast food history as it happens.
Of course, in the time we are being kept guessing as to the various possibilities of the test's results (I am sure many of you are betting on a Big Mac win), some small questions do tickle the back of the throat.
How can we be sure that the Big Macs in the ad even remotely resemble real Big Macs? The story is that the food was flown in. But it's not as if they had a culinary Ronald from McDonalds on the shoot, is it? So, for all we know, those poor Inuits might, in the guise of a Big Mac, have been fed horse.
The second question that rumbles the stomach is, well, did anyone regurgitate? Will we, in fact, in the interests of documentary veracity, be subjected to the sight of a virgin burger-eater in the act of bodily rejection?
In a development that I know will have stunned the creators, the teaser site has already caused much controversy. One commenter on gothamist.com was moved to write: "I don't think indigenous people should be used in that way to amuse a bored public that wants a sensation at any price."
Oh, but it's a recession. And Whoppers are very, very cheap.
And Sharon Atkins of the Institute of Daily Nutrition told New York's bastion of daily mental nutrition, the Daily News: "It's outrageous. What's next? Are we going to start taking guns out to some of these remote places and ask them which one they like better?"
Do we actually have any evidence that guns weren't used in this case? Purely for self-protection, of course.
Still, for all those who fear this will be like a new Borat movie directed by David Lean, at the very least this campaign will happily stir the highly important burger debate around and around our cogitative intestines.
Can these really be the same people who created "I'm a PC"?
These days it's hard for a porn producer to find new ways to go where no man (or woman or beast) has gone before.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that Virgin Galactic, the company that plans to fly passengers into orbit from late 2009, announced that it has received a $1 million offer to allow a porn movie to be shot on one of its spacecraft, an offer the company has declined.
As I understand it, the producers thought they would be able to find a completely different kind of action if the participants were under the influence of zero gravity.
It is, however, difficult to understand how they thought they might be able to shoot such a movie.
Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson acknowledges the pleasures of the service.
(Credit: CC Tanya Ryno)Virgin Galactic's proposed flights offer, for a return ticket of $200,000, only a five-minute period of weightlessness.
However, those who involve themselves in the pleasures of pornography explain to me that the copulatory scenes tend to last a little longer than your average real-life five minutes. And sometimes they involve multiple physically demanding entanglements.
I am, therefore, unclear as to whether the producers (who remain strangely unnamed) wanted to rent the spacecraft solely for their own purposes or whether they were merely looking to book seats for the performers and a single member camera crew.
If it were the former, then surely the $1million offer has something of a derisory nature.
If it were the latter, might Virgin Galactic have charged the other passengers a little extra, given that they would be in the presence of an entirely otherworldly transport that would truly make the trip a once-in-a-lifetime experience?
One's mind is also somewhat disturbed by whether sex in space really is such an easy pleasure. Would there not be a problem with synchronization?
Still, Virgin's extraordinary and surprising intransigence on this alluring space sexperiment means that those who have had to tolerate suboptimal sex for so many years will also have to do without suborbital sex for a while longer.
We really are living in very difficult times.
There might be all kinds of fascinating self-protective reasons why Google is launching the Android phone in conjunction with T-Mobile. However, at least as interesting a development this past week is the company's entry into Interbrand's list of the top 10 brands in the world.
Google's sudden appearance at No. 10 represents a jump of 10 places and puts the company at a, for some, surprising 14 places above Apple. And a few thousand places above Bear Stearns.
Directly above Google is Disney and one rung below you'll find Mercedes. Much further down you'll find Nike, eBay, Starbucks and, something that shows a peculiar lack of taste among the judges, Prada.
It's clear that the Google brand has enormous equity. And, now that the company is beginning to associate itself with tangible objects rather than just fungible words, a thought comes to mind: what objects would you buy from Google?
I ask because perhaps the last brand that carried with it as much young, positive emotional equity was Virgin.
Virgin represented an intuitive understanding of youth--not just young boys, but the positive emotions that come from being young, free, and just slightly different. It also enjoyed a product that was clearly better than its rivals and senior management that was as happy to express its uniqueness by flying around in balloons as Google's bosses are to disclose their personal DNA.
Virgin thought it could use its brand equity to sell, amongst other things, cosmetics, clothes, financial services, flowers, and space flights. And, um, vodka. Oh, and health clubs, bridal wear, cell phones, cola, and video games. And stem cell storage. All with varying degrees of success.
But what if Google got together with some other incredibly talented (and young, naturally) folks and launched, dare one even suggest it, a gPod?
What about Google Health Farms, specifically created for those suffering laptop-induced repetitive strain syndrome and general brain freeze? What about Google Gear, specially engineered for the Cool-But-Not-Really look?
Given that Google's management seems to be fairly proficient at making money, might you one day be inclined to trust a Google Bank (a bank with a heart? a Democratic Bank?)? Or what if they launched some Odwalla-style healthy drinks that were originally created to enhance the brainpower of the company's staff?
If Philippe Starck is trusted enough to design a chair, an apartment, a toothbrush, and a house (oh, and a wind turbine), might the Google brand be successfully attached to anything that was clearly the product of an abnormal abundance of brains? Like an insanely green car, a revolutionary laptop, or an intelligent city council?
I know that brands are supposed to stay close to their core competence. But it would seem a shame if so much brainpower were merely concentrated on, well, selling advertising.
So I am secretly hoping that this Android experiment will merely be a taste of one of the world's top 10 brands contributing to the deep, abundant, and sensual pleasure we all get from various inanimate objects.
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