Poetry in Promotion

   In the annals of poetic accomplishment, Gary Hernandez does not rank among the immortals. In the annals of marcomms accomplishment, however, he warrants an honourable mention. Gary Hernandez, in case you’ve forgotten, was the disgruntled Sainsbury’s employee who placed self-penned poems in packets of cakes, cookies and similar sugary snacks. His Taste the Difference haiku included such deathless observations as Enjoy your cookies/Every bite is a minute/I’ll never get back; The first victim of/Retail customer service/Is sincerity; and, it almost goes without saying, Taste the difference/I can’t taste the difference/Maybe it’s my fault.

It’s not for me to comment on the calibre of Hernandez’s haiku. (I’m the man whose tasteless limerick ‘There once was a scholar called Kotler’ got me cashiered from the officer class of the marketing academy.) Nevertheless it’s noteworthy that J. Sainsbury immediately withdrew the offending items from sale, announced that Mr Hernandez was no longer in their employ, and apologised profusely to the organisation’s loyal, much-loved, come-back-soon customers. They could of course have gone further and apologised for foisting high-calorie comestibles on the nation’s obesity-prone populace. But let’s not get too picky about this.

Sainsbury, clearly, followed the classic crisis management protocols that have been best PR practice since the Tylenol contamination recall, which features in every business ethics textbook bar none. I suspect, though, that they might have missed a marketing trick or two. The subsequent social media scuttlebutt showed that, although many consumers were understandably concerned about bored bakers interfering with their sticky buns – hey, who really knows what goes on behind the serried ranks of baguettes, bloomers and Belfast baps? – more than a few quite fancied rhyming couplets with their fondant fancies and acrostics appended to angel cakes. The very idea is reminiscent, somehow, of fortune cookies, Christmas crackers, hand-written Valentine cards and the lucky bags of consumers’ rose-tinted childhoods. Surprise stanzas help turn a slightly guilty indulgence into an entirely innocent pleasure. In a world where food labels ordinarily scold, instruct and harangue the lumpen customer, happy haiku are just what the PR doctor ordered.   
Better yet, if Sainsbury rolled the idea out on a national scale, there’d be an enormous ancillary demand for new haiku, fresh verse, tasty ditties, moreish refrains, best-before ballads and buy one get one free verse. (Bawdy limericks, naturally, would be strictly limited to beneath-the-counter chocolate éclairs.) Indeed, you don’t need me to tell you that there is one country, and one country only, which is capable of meeting the mounting need for screeds of sugary sonnets, muffin madrigals, cream-puff canzoni and birthday cake nursery rhymes. I’m speaking of the land of saints and scholars and sectarian graffiti. 

Let’s seize the day, I say, before Hallmark muscles in with mawkish odes to mom’s apple pie. Let’s organise classes and short courses and poetry preparation workshops. Let’s frack our published poets for the secrets of scone scansion. Let’s set up a Seamus Heaney memorial centre for marcomm macaroons. I’m sure Sainsbury would stump up the dough. 
When oh when, my friends, will the IDA and Invest NI recognise our nation’s greatest natural resource and act accordingly? We’re poets, but they don’t know it. The proof of the pudding, never forget, is in the poetics:

A bored baker by the name of Hernandez
Placed haiku in Sainsbury’s packages
It was a bit of good craic
But they gave him the sack
So he got his own back in their sausages.