Listen to Me

So listen to me, “it’s like chicken soup -but with a hard-on”. -That’s the phrase. Yes, it’s rough and shocking, but that’s what it takes today to get through. No, listen, “Your mother’s chicken soup -but with a hard-on.” No, we don’t show the hard-on. How could we show the hard-on? It’s chicken soup. It’s a metaphor. You know what a metaphor is, right? No, I don’t mean like a definition. No, it doesn’t describe the thickness of the soup. It codes your product. It says: soup is now extreme.

It means its hearty -but also extreme, you know, out there. Like no one drinks just “juice” anymore; it’s got to be twisted, it’s got to have like a threeway between an apple and a banana and some dark eyed hairy kiwi. Yes, I mean the fruit. Everything is extreme now. Soup has got to get radical, it’s gotta be twisted, it’s gotta cross over to the dark side. Soup has got to be like Batman, he’s like your hero and everything, but deep down you know he’s fucked up. Soup can’t just be this thing you have when you go to see Grandma and you’re sick. You’ll still have that, your anchor branding, good, solid nourishing imagery. But I’m saying this is where some of your soup goes down the rabbit hole and emerges with like scissors for hands and shit. With a hard on.

Eventually, people don’t have to say the whole tag phrase. They just say: “it’s on.” Or the guy with the cup of soup, you just see him look down, real subtle and cut to:”M-m good.” For like late night spots. Hell, yes, people are up, they’ve been doing all kinds of drugs, they’re spilling out of clubs, they need nutrition. Or maybe they’ve been up all night abusing themselves in front of the television. Yeah, I tend to tell it like it is, but let me tell you, a lot of grotty hands are opening your product at two a.m. and popping it in a crusty microwave because like that all they’re going to do this weekend. Your product has a long shelf life. Who do you think it is for? Not people who go out. Not yet.

Look, this magic phrase, it can move on and apply to your other soups as well: “It’s New England Clam Chowder -but with a hard-on.” “Boston Baked Beans -with a hard-on.” Listen to me: “Chicken and Stars -with hard-on.” People will be taking this stuff into clubs. Soup is going to be like the new champagne, people cruising around in Beemers with two hot thermoses of the stuff.

You’re in a club, yo, and let’s say Cro Def -he’s a new thing, sorta a “urban” rap artist with a caveman thing -he’s got like a gold club and lots of fur and all these bones through his nose -he looks like a sorta pimping Issac Hayes/Fred Flintstone. No, he’s the next big thing -he’s at the club, and he’s got the ladies all over him -yes they look like “urban” Wilma and Bettys -that’s what they call them in the cavecore scene -yeah, yeah, “paleoschool, coming from the Eocene, Eocene ...from the town of Bedrock” -you’ve heard it -yes, the one with all the dinosaur samples that ends with a comet -any way, Cro Def is at a club with lots of Bettys, and Pebbles -mad crazy Bettys and Pebbles - you know, getting on his Bam-Bam, and then he like stops, and you think it’s like his phone (which they call a bone) or he’s gonna go for his club or something, and what does he pull out, but an old familiar thermos -yes, with the familiar plaid and everything. And he starts like, chilling on some soup. And some younger cave player steps to him in like a tall furry hat and asks, “Yo, Cro Def, what’s up with that?” and Cro Def just says: “Yo, it’s good soup man.” And then you pan over and the ladies got crackers, you know what I’m saying. No, I’m not high and I’m not offended you asked. I’ve taken a special course and it has changed my life, but I’m not here to talk about that. I also take some special Tahitian supplements and walk a path of spiritual guidance. But what I’m here to do today is talk about the future. Because the future is where we are going to spend the better part of our lives, unless we’ve already spent it, in which case, it’s the past.

This thing has legs, this thing can travel. Listen: “It’s Tide -with a hard-on.” “Comet -fuck that shit -this is Ajax is Comet with a hard-on. It will fuck that shit so your Momma won’t know you’ve ever been here. Your Momma wonder if you were ever born.” Hell, yes -viral marketing, stealth marketing, those people can swear, right? And what, are like the internet and cable for?

Let me ask you: do kids buy soup? Fuck no, no kid buys soup. Adults buy soup. So who have we got to reach? Adults. And we have to talk to them in adult language. Grandma and Grandpa will still buy the same old soup, you’ll keep your standards. But now they’ll be something in that same aisle for Devin and Sith. How about this? How about this? “That’s cool Grandma -let me grab the soup -on my hoverbike!” How would you like to hear that sentence? Because let me tell you, that sentence is going to happen, those words will be spoken, and they will either apply to your product, or the product that comes to be synonymous with soup in the Twenty-First Century.

I know that this is not the way you have come to think of your product. But what is your product? It’s something people used to put in bomb shelters or eat when they had diarrhea and that’s great, but there’s more to life than sitting in a bomb shelter shitting your brains out waiting for the world to end. Your product can be anything. To anyone. But most importantly in the 25-35 demographic that has more soup money than they know what to do with.
The future doesn’t ask us what it should look like. The future doesn’t ask our advice. It’s just there and if it looks monstrous and strange -that’s how we know it’s the future. I know what I’m asking is hard. Because what I’m asking you is: to be naked. Because Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden: but they didn’t know it! That’s what the future is like, becoming naked. And that’s not easy. That’s why it’s my job to get naked first.

This is the brave new world. This is the better mousetrap. This is opportunity knocking. Knocking -with a hard-on.


TURN #81: WEEK 67; WORDS: 71,278
NEXT BY 3 OCTOBER 2006