Words Dept.: entry

According to several newspapers yesterday, Kellogg’s is planning to use lasers to burn its logo on to individual corn flakes in an attempt to foil impostors. Metro, The Telegraph, The Daily Record and Marketing printed this as fact. Since journalists don’t seem to have realised that the story is made up by some PR people and isn’t, strictly speaking, you know, true, here are some pointers for their benefit:

• You’ve not seen any actual corn flakes with the logo on, have you? All you’ve got is a JPEG that’s been knocked up in Photoshop and no real idea whether the technical gobbledygook Kellogg’s mentions makes any sense
• Kellogg’s makes 67m packets of Corn Flakes each year, with 2.7bn bowls consumed annually in the UK (according to Kellogg’s). How the hell are they going to burn each of those tens of billions of corn flakes with a frigging laser while keeping costs and production levels constant?
• There’s no incentive for Kellogg’s to do it. They constantly say they don’t supply cereals to anyone else, so how could their corn flakes be mistaken for another brand’s? Unless someone is inserting “fake” own brand corn flakes into a Kellogg’s box (which they’re not)

I guess I might be perceived as humourless for complaining about what is, admittedly, quite a witty joke that ties in cleverly with an ongoing PR strategy blah, blah, blah. But actually, isn’t it a bit worrying that newspapers will willingly publish an April Fool’s gag as fact in the middle of October? Is the internet to blame for this? Whether or not something is even vaguely plausible seems to take a back seat to how many hits it generates on the (Telegraph) website.

In another triumph for Flat Earth News, it’s been revealed that a bunch of filmmakers have been planting made up stories about celebrities in the papers in a successful attempt to prove that the tabloids will print any celebrity-related rubbish without bothering to check whether or not it’s true. Consequently, the Daily Express reported that Russell Brand wanted to be a banker and had a Fisher Price cash register as a child, while the Mirror, the Star and the Times of India went for a story about Amy Winehouse’s hair catching on fire. Both stories are wholly untrue.

Meanwhile, it’s been reported today that Kirstie Allsop might be getting a Tory peerage. Unfortunately, there’s every reason to suggest this particular slice of implausibility may actually be true.