This week restaurant chain Denny's squeezed out a brand new mascot for their nationwide marketing campaign. Let's take a look at it, shall we?
Oh dear. Yup, that's a turd wearing a fedora. A turd that was apparently designed by Aardman Studios.
OK, I think it's supposed to be a breakfast sausage and not a hunk of walking, talking fecal matter. I guess that might be OK if that was the only thing on Denny's menu. Since they offer a variety of food, sausage isn't the first thing that springs to mind when I see this thing, and it ends up looking like a nice, healthy dump. Definitely not something you want to see when you're trying to eat in a restaurant.
Once again I have to ask— how the hell does something like this make it to print and into stores? If Denny's is anything like where I work, then this design had to go through dozens and dozens of people for approval. I cannot believe that not a single one of them looked at this thing and said, "Wait a minute... that's not a sausage, that's a turd!" Someone was definitely asleep at the wheel in the corporate headquarters.
Even if it didn't look like a sentient bowel movement, it's still a terrible design. Adding a cartoony face and limbs to a product is one of the most hackneyed and unoriginal graphic design concepts possible— one that was old and worn out back in the Speedy Alka-Seltzer days. No self respecting graphic designer would ever create such a thing, especially here in the 21st Century.
In fact back when I was in art school, I had a professor who actually kicked a student out of his class for creating a mascot very similar to this one!
On the other hand, I supposed Saucy The Breakfast Sausage here was better than Denny's original mascot idea— Scuttles The Kitchen Cockroach.
I think they must have gone with the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" mentality. (Or as Oscar Wilde put it, "It is better to be talked about than not to be talked about." They knew there would be a shitstorm (heh) over this, and indeed social media had a field day. But maybe they're hoping people who wouldn't normally go to Denny's, will go there now, perhaps as a dare?
ReplyDeleteThat is too funny. It's like you read my mind. I see a poop with a hat too. How does this go from production meetings to final approval with NO ONE noticing what we notice.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. As I said, at my job dozens of people have to check and approve my work. There's no way something like this would have made it to print.
ReplyDelete