Sunday, December 21, 2008

Grand brands are not deceptive

I went to target the other day and was craving something sweet. I came across little debbie 100 calorie triple fudge brownies. This is what the packaging looked like:


I opened the box in the car and I laughed uncontrollably outloud. The product was so small and deceptive it was laughable. In fact, the product shot on the box was bigger than the actual product. The box also shows three brownies. They failed to mention 100 calories was only for one brownie the size of my thumb.


I looked up consumer reviews on this product and this is what the people had to say:

Hungry Girl blog: " The world's smallest fudge brownie. With tiny stripes. In an itty bitty plastic bag. It is laughably tiny. Really, REALLY tiny. Almost a joke. And it's fiber-free. Bummer. Even though this brownie tastes pretty good, it's hard to justify spending 100 calories and 4g fat on something so depressingly small."


Associated Content: "Not only are these brownies small, they are very flat and really, there is not much to this snack. These brownies were a disappointment to me. These brownies are too small. Period. Don't let the name fool you."

And those above reviews were just a few of the many angry consumer reviews I found.

Brands should use impulse buys to jump over one of the major hurdles of brands: getting the consumer to try your product. It is not effective for brands to get consumers at an impulse buy and then disregard them. This is detrimental for revenue because it eliminates repeat customers.


Brands more and more these days are trying to adapt to consumer trends instead of being true to what their brand stands for. If a brand does extremely well at making fattening brownies, then that is where they should put most of their efforts.

Little Debbie's brand promise is unwrap a smile. Unfortunately I unwrapped a hatered for the brand.