A Letter to Dove Chocolate

Dear Dove,

I totally *heart* your dark chocolates. Especially the little square individually wrapped ones. They're perfect for munching during a movie, and even better with popcorn.

But I have a small problem with them. You know those sayings you put inside the wrappers, things like, "Live your dreams" and all that jazz? I hate to break it to you, but...

Your sayings are really lame.

Now calm down a second, don't start crying or anything. Or yelling. This wasn't always the case. When you first released your foil-wrapped chocolate units to the dangerous marketing wilderness and told them to fly, they came equipped with some nice phrases, which helped them get off the ground. Don't ask me what they were; it's been too long since I saw them, though I distinctly have a vague recollection of good language.

But then you must have fired your chocolate writer, or your product became a teenager and wanted more "exciting" language. And then Suck City arrived.

Let me demonstrate my point. Here are some of your phrases I've run across recently.

• "Feed your sense of anticipation." What the blazes does that even mean? Did you start with the word 'feed,' seeing as your product is food, and then just go to the random word generator for the last bit? Or are you under the impression most people read those little quips of wisdom before eating the chocolate, and they are therefore anticipating the chocolate while they read? Cuz I gotta tell ya, I eat the chocolate first. That's why I bought chocolate.
• "Sleep late tomorrow." Gee Super Lame Chocolate Wrapper Without a Brain, I'd love to. But there's this job thing I've got going on. And I don't read these messages to get an idea of something awesome to do. At this point, I read them for another chance to roll my eyes at some idiot's idea of great marketing. Because seriously, if I came up with phrases like this to put on a chocolate wrapper, I would get hit by a metaphorical bus. Because they're terrible.
• "Indulge in dark." Okay, yeah, I get that you're talking about dark chocolate here. But a.) you don't need to tell me to indulge; I already bought the freakin' product. And 2.) this can be terribly misinterpreted. For example, I wondered if you might be suggesting I indulge in not paying my electric bill. Because then it would be dark in my apartment. I don't consider that an indulgence. (Where did you think I was going with this?)

Hey, I know the truth hurts. But what kind of consumer would I be if I didn't offer to rectify this terrible, cheesy, unimaginative apocalypse of foily nonsense? I offer to you a marvelously easy solution: hire me to write these phrases for you.

Before you jump right on that (as you well should), let me be a fair applicant and offer you a few wonderful ideas I've got stored away for chocolatey foil phrasing. I've got some awesome ones. Such as:

• "I had flavor even as a bean!" (Paid for by the American Chocolicide Awareness Organization)


• "Why have chocolate when you could have whiskey?" (This idea would be joint marketing with Jameson, whose bottles would say "Why have whiskey when you could have chocolate with words on its wrapper?")


• "What would you do for a job like mine?" (We'd throw in a little extra money for this gem and include a microchip that plays the Klondike Bar theme upon the foil's opening. Except it'll go da da da dadada dum instead of da da da dadada dum so we don't have to worry about copyright infringement.)


• "You're eating chocolate." (This phrase will be in Braille for blind folks without tastebuds who don't know what they purchased. It's a very large demographic, you know.)

Now that's some good marketing and phrasing. I'll be waiting for your call.