May 1997 net worth by Todd Levin |
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Recently, while engaging in my favorite office pastime -
entering domain names in the Internic whois interface to see if odd web
domain names have been purchased and by whom - I discovered that the
"salt.com" domain was not available for registering. Worse yet, the name
was already registered by the Indiana Sugar Company, a clear competitive
front in the "snacking urge" marketing game. What follows is a
dramatization of events which may or may not have already occurred in this
decisive strike on Marketing Dominance on a battleground where salty and
sweet are as important as Mohammed and Krishna. Certain names have been
changed to protect myself from researching the real names. Otherwise,
everything, to the best of my knowledge, is completely true.
The scene is a corporate boardroom high above the Gary, Indiana sugar
mines. Viewable from the window are the enormous, menacing sugar towers
most Americans have only read about in history books. Men, women and a
handful of obese six-year olds, with sharp suits and rotted-out teeth, are
seated around a giant, oak conference table. The table has been dipped in
candy apple syrup and has since hardened and been polished into an
attractive and delicious cherry buff.
T. Walter Abscess, President and CEO of the Indiana Sugar company, seated
at the head of the table, is sucking candy buttons off a wet strip of stock
ticker paper which is being fed noisily through a ticker-tape machine at
the far end of the conference room. After an uncomfortable silence, save
for the occasional slurping sounds coming from T. Walter or a couple of the
other shareholders munching busily on confections, T. Walter clears his
throat, braces both strong hands against the end of the boardroom table and
speaks in a voice louder than the Kool-Aid Man.
"Respected shareholders of the Indiana Sugar Company, today is a good day
for refined sugars!"
A resounding round of enthusiastic applause booms throughout the boardroom,
as each in attendance hangs on every sugary-sweet word of T. Walter.
Unable to control his excitement, A VP of Marketing begins wildly stuffing
his mouth with gummi worms.
"Now, now, Stevens. No need to cut off your breathing supply with gelatin
and corn syrup - not just yet, anyway. Admittedly, I may at times possess
a tendency to, shall we say, overindulge in the importance of events here
at the Indiana Sugar Company. Now, sometimes this overindulgence is
completely justified, as with the release and distribution of Wax Lips, a
decidedly huge boon to the business of making confections. And sometimes
it explodes in our collective face, as it did with the release and
distribution of Wax Sores, an embarrassment to our business and a general
period of considerable unease in the entire industry. But I am definitely
getting one of those feelings. One of those feelings that we, as a world
power, a commanding force over the snack yearnings of the global
population, are on the cusp of - and here I go again - on the cusp of the
final conflict with the ones I will refer to only as 'The Other.'"
"Ladies and Gentlemen, trusted shareholders of the Indiana Sugar Company,
Billy, Amanda, little Timmy - as you all know, we have been in a bitter
struggle with the manufacturers and refiners of salt for dominance of the
world's tastebuds. Jobs have been lost, third world villages reduced to
rubble, lives sacrificed to angry pagan fire gods, and all for very good
reasons - there were good reasons for dropping that bus filled with
schoolchildren into a live volcano, weren't there, Stevens? Anyhow, I will
admit, though it chafes me considerably to do so, that we have been in a
deadlock with the salt people since the dawn of snacking. We release
pudding pops, they release Cool Ranch Doritos. We release Frankenberry;
they counterattack with Ritz Bits. We can't seem to gain ground for very
long without those crafty sons of bitches - forgive my language, little
Timmy - following our every move with another repulsively salty success.
As you all know, our only effort to combine our cumulative powers - the
Chocolate Covered Salt Lick - tested well but was nonetheless never able to
really get mainstream distribution. And ever since then, it's been
guerilla war."
"This battle has been waged across continents, across time. And now, as
the millenium approaches, we have even moved into Virtual space in our
quest to forever quench the known universe's snack yearnings with
tooth-freshening, glorious sugary sweets."
For effect, T. Walter pulls on a rope which is dangling from the ceiling
slightly above his head, releasing a shower of Reggie Bars which the
shareholders scramble and scratch to devour, often without even removing
the waxy cardboard backing.
"Our New Media Research department - known to many of you as our 'Freak
Media' department - has been investigating developing an online presence
for the Indiana Sugar company. We are trying to make the world aware of
the importance of sugar in our lives and are trying as always to reach that
slippery, media-savvy Generation-X demographic, which our research has
revealed apparently enjoys sugary snacks and salty snacks from time to time
but has difficulty making life-long commitments to either. We have even
instituted a catch phrase for the site - "Sugar is Radically Sweet to the
Extreme, Dudes!!!" - and have inundated the site with brightly colored,
MTV-style images of long-haired hippie types snowboarding on mountains of
wet sugar and bungee jumping into large piles of confectionery sugar.
Kudos to our Consumer Marketing department, Degenerate Post-Adolescent
Division, for all of their hard work in nailing down this demographic's
tastes and lifestyles."
"Now I know many of you are thinking, 'Well, the salt manufacturers can't
be far behind. Surely they must be launching their own strike, perhaps a
web site featuring young, groovy adults bungee jumping into huge piles of
salt or something.' Well, hee hee hee, forgive me for giggling like a
schoolgirl sitting on a garden sprinkler, but I am having one of those
moments where I feel as though I am holding the Sword of Damocles and all
of you will be caught by surprise and dismembered. And now I would like to
turn the table over to Tom Simonds, our new New Media Research Manager. Tom?"
Low mumblings, murmurings, and the faint sound of an infant weeping for its
mother's teat can be heard as all heads turn this way and that, trying to
pick Mr. Simonds out in the room. Slowly, a man rises from a chair at the
rear of the room. He is slight, nearly swimming in his suit, with a small
mustache covering an almost nonexistent upper lip. He composes himself,
removes the colorful, oversized all-day sucker from his mouth, and
approaches the front of the room.
"Hi, everyone. Thanks T. Walter, and thank you for those wonderful bonuses
this year. Right everyone?? I will never tire of having that familiar
semi-truck pull up to my slightly depreciated split-level ranch home to
drop off my cubic ton of Choc-O-Diles. And that's not sucking up, although
it probably sounds like that's exactly what it is. Anyway, in researching
a possible web strategy by our competition, I decided to begin at the
beginning and check through the Internic to determine whether 'The Other' had
registered 'salt.com' as their corporate domain name. Oh, I see some of
you are a bit confused. Can someone explain what the Internic does?
Little Timmy?"
"The Internic is a governing body through which all upper level domain
names are determined and the privately held channel through which all
corporate and public domain name registering services are performed."
"Thanks, Timmy. I'm sure there will be an extra Scooter Pie in your In
Box this afternoon. Anyway, a funny thing happened. I performed a whois
search to see who had registered 'salt.com' as their corporate site name and
I discovered that NO ONE had."
An awe-inspiring hush falls over the room, as the marketing wheels begin to
silently turn.
"Naturally, I seized on the moment and registered the name to our company.
Which means that should 'The Other' desire to develop a web presence, they
will have to forgo using 'salt.com' unless they wish to purchase or barter
the name from us. This means that, essentially, they are blocked from
developing a web presence and it also means that Cyberspace is ours for the
taking. And the rest, shall we say, will be history."
An enormous ovation follows, wherein Tom Simonds is carried around on the
shoulders of his superiors and Little Timmy's head, inexplicably, ends up
on a sharp pike which one of the VPs of Distribution and Dental Hygiene
Anti-Propaganda marches around with proudly like it is some sort of Mardi
Gras float.
After the room is composed, T. Walter rises and approaches a chart stand
concealed by a sheet. He addresses the room once again.
"Please, I appreciate your applause. Mr. Simonds, thank you very much.
And will someone from maintenance please remove Little Timmy's decapitated
carcass? I would like to show you all something which might better
illustrate how the taking of 'salt.com' will affect the taste bud industry.
But first, are there any questions?"
"Yes, T. Walter. Isn't it possible that 'The Other' could simply register
'salty.com' and continue to compete with us across the Internet?"
"Ah, well, let me think. Security, please remove this man at once and rend
his flesh slowly and painfully."
Two hulking security guards burst into the room and remove the
ne'er-do-well to rend his flesh slowly and painfully.
"As I was saying, I would like to show you all this chart. As you can see,
it is a diagram of the human tongue with all of the taste buds pointed out.
We have sweet [applause], hot, sour, and salty [boos and hisses and a loud
"motherfucking cocksuckers!!" fill the room]. Now, as you all know we have
a very strong alliance with sour, and we have had some success in the past
in cooperatives with hot, particularly in Southeast Asia. Now let me show
you what this chart might look like in five years after we have
successfully dominated Virtual space: As you can see, the area which
salty previously occupied is now replaced by a new taste bud sensation
called really sweet. I am confident that five years is all it will take
to cause an evolutionary adjustment in all human taste buds to eliminate
the salty sensation and replace it with the new really sweet sensation
for which our researchers are currently working like huskies to develop
supporting products.
"To that end, as we speak here, I have already funded an international task
force to travel the globe and replace all popcorn salt shakers at movie
theaters with sugar shakers. This is just for test-marketing purposes. But
if this goes as planned, as I stand here today, I can confidently say:
Today popcorn. Tomorrow, the entire tongue!!! Sieg Heil!!"
The room explodes, literally, as all of the shareholders and T. Walter
Abscess himself burst from excitement. From their bodies rains a shower of
colorfully wrapped candies and small plastic toys and baubles. The doors
to the boardroom fly open and a herd of eight-year-olds run in, scrambling to
scoop up every last shiny, sweet object in the room. And even god would
agree with T. Walter Abscess: today was a good day for sugar.
back to the junk drawer
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