(btw this is literally my favorite meme of all time and i finally get to use it!)
CTC what the fuck man? If you were going to class up your cereal, it would have been nice for a little heads up. Kidding guys, jokes, shit like this happens but the way Cinnamon Toast Crunch and the fine people at General Mills tried to backpedal out of this situation is stuff of legend. Let’s get into it.
So, what happened? Well at some point this week or last, celebrity Jensen Karp (whom I gather is a producer/musician of sorts) husband of the girl that played Topanga from Saved by the bell, was hoping to enjoy a nice bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch before doing a rendition of imagine by Jon Lennon to his Instagram followers, when he was awestruck by what seemed to be cinnamon crusted shrimp tails in his cereal. Like legit shrimp tails, and if you want to see more just google it, I mean he posted the picture, said he found other dried black bits (shrimp shit I imagine) and then, ensued one of the greatest blunders in corporate social media history. General Mills, you done fucked up.
The social team at Cinnamon Toast Crunch immediately tried to backpedal as hard as their lil legs could go. They responded to Karp by saying that this was “unmixed, solid product” that was actually just cinnamon clumped together. Sounds like a legit event that could occur right? Well, the problem is Karp took a SECOND picture with the shrimp tails in his hand, clearly showing that they were not in fact clumps of cinnamon, but the stuff you mix in to make a banging fried rice dish. The shit you get from the sea. What I’m saying is this was def shrimp and nothing else. So, CTC’s social team BACKPEDALED EVEN MORE if that’s possible, saying that they are very concerned, please send us the box, yadda yadda. That didn’t work for Karp who knew that sending the box or the shrimp inside would most certainly “get lost” aka destroyed, so he went back to let them know he ain’t playin’ no games, in fact Karp being a celebrity with some cash flow is getting the shrimp tails tested so that General Mills can no longer try to deny what was sent out. Amazing.
So what’s the verdict? Well as soon as your brand is becoming a meme for all the wrong reasons, maybe instead of back peddling, you should say “look, some fuck on the assembly line decided to go to lunch early, shit happens, we’ll fire the poor, hungry bastard”. You know what that does? It gives the public a sense of false hope that this is taken care of and won’t happen in the future. Come on Cinnamon Toast Crunch Social Media Team, you can do better than whatever the fuck that was.
Social Media is a bitch and then you die, that’s why we get high, jk, those are Nas lyrics. But Social Media is a bitch and we just saw how not to handle that from a corporate level.
Anyway, that’s my take on it. Until next time. -GS
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