Imagethief

Finger lickin' good?

As someone who works in the sprawling penumbra of the marketing industry, Imagethief is fairly interested in how things are branded and what those brands mean to people. For instance, what does the "Imagethief" brand mean to you? Does it represent insightful and entertaining China and PR commentary? Leftish rant? Or just one more asshole with a keyboard and no life? The answer to this question may affect Imagethief's future marketing efforts, such as they are.

One of the most important spheres for branding is food. Think about all the ways that a nearly identical, toxic mix of sugar, refined flour and food coloring has been marketed to children via a nearly infinite variety of breakfast cereal brands. One doesn't have to look far to see the power of this. A quick check of the shelves of any Jenny Lou will show you that the kiddie cereals cost about double what most of the staid, adult brands do, thus reflecting the power of branding and marketing to turn your children from sensible, articulate human beings into raving lunatics.

Because of the power and pervasiveness of food branding, I was interested to read on CNN.com about an Australian magazine's efforts to rebrand kangaroo meat in a way that doesn't jerk at the heartstrings of overseas consumers who see the Kangaroo as a loveable, pet-like creature rather than as a seven-foot tall, hopping rat. Interestingly, the name they have selected is "Australus".

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Does the idea of tossing a kangaroo steak on the grill upset you? How about a tender cut of australus?

A food magazine's hunt for a new name for kangaroo meat -- aimed at putting a spring in the step of efforts to sell the product -- has a winner, media reported Tuesday.

More than 2,700 people from 41 nations entered the Sydney-based Food Companion International magazine competition to rename meat derived from one of Australia's best-loved and most-recognizable animals.

There is actually a long history of giving previously unappetizingly-named animals a more palatable label, usually right about the time they are used to replace something else that has been hunted or, more often, fished into extinction. Think about "Chilean Seabass", once known as Patagonian Toothfish. As "sea bass" it fetches $20 a pound (if they can catch it any more). As "toothfish" it fetched jack.

Toothfish Chilean sea bass.

This is understandable. Despite what you might think in a world where people shovel down quasi-meats like "Chicken McNuggets" by the pallet-load, most people are fairly discriminating about what they eat. Or, in reality, they are discriminating about the idea of what they eat. The reality is something of a free-for-all. But, then, that's marketing for you.

Of course, China --especially southern China-- may be the great exception to all of this. There it seems to be rather a point of pride to be brutally honest about what you eat. After all, how many ways can you rebrand civet cat? But, then, even the Chinese often refer to chicken feet (a favorite of Mrs. Imagethief, thanks to high levels of skin-friendly collagen) as the far more exotic-sounding "phoenix toes".

So, in that spirit:

Magazine editor Mel Nathan told The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper "australus" sounded dignified and predicted it could be a breakthrough for the kangaroo meat industry.

Er, dignified? I am not sure that's ever been a requirement for food animals. Are chickens "dignified"? Not in my neighborhood (and we have a few). But people eat 'em by the countless billions. Right away I can see where "australus" is going to run into trouble. No one will know what the hell it is. Even when meats are rebranded, it's usually with some generic indication of the animal it was derived from. So Chilean sea bass, or "rock salmon" (shark)  is still, in the end, recognizeably fish. Even a Chicken McNugget claims, perhaps optimistically, to be chicken. But what the hell is an "australus?" A pterodactyl? A giant ground sloth? A platypus? Would you feed it to your child? God knows what comes out of Australia. It's the world epicenter of freaky, poisonous animals.

In fact, I think this magazine is taking the wrong approach. The problem isn't that kangaroo has a bad or inherently unappetizing name. It's that non-Australians see kangaroos as cuddly pets, like giant chinchillas, and so react emotionally to the idea of eating 'roo, like they would react to eating Bambi. So keep the name, but work hard to rebrand the animal itself as something worthy of eating. Publish a lot of articles about kangaroo feedlots, kangaroo attacks on small children, how kangaroos drown in rainstorms because they look up, and so on. Accompany that with a campaign of great kangaroo recipes, and some kangaroo restaurant promotions, and you're on fire. Six months of this and they'll have 'roos on spits at PETA fundraisers.

Imagethief is not subject to any aversions when it comes to eating cuddly animals. I've eaten and enjoyed rabbit (bunnus?), squirrel, flying fox (fiddly), venison and, yes, kangaroo. I do believe that food animals should be humanely raised and slaughtered, but after that, anything is fair game. Heck, I'd probably eat Hello Kitty if she wasn't a cat. (I have cats, and my aversion to eating them is based not on their pet factor, but on my belief as a daily litterbox cleaner that cat would be nasty. Of course who even knows if Hello Kitty uses a litterbox? She's always drawn from the front, so we have no idea if she even has an asshole. But this is a digression.)

Now, in the interest of doing my bit to promote consumption of kangaroo meat, here are my suggestions for five killer kangaroo recipies:

• The 'roo-rack: twelve ribs in spicy, Kansas City-style barbecue sauce
• Joey de vivre: veal of un-weaned kangaroo, snatched from the pouch before hopping toughens up the meat
• "Springles" brand chips: Deep fried kangaroo ears stacked in a can
• Rooshi: Raw kangaroo meat served with wasabe and soy sauce
• Joey-burger supreme: Two all 'roo patties, lettuce, onion, pickles, special sauce on a sesame-seed bun ("Boston style" with bacon and mushroom for 50 cents more)
• Vindaroo: Spicy kangaroo curry. Better have a lassi (not Lassie) with this.
• Joey jerky: In chile, black pepper and teriyaki flavors
• Chongqing style 麻辣袋鼠; the best in Sino-Australian fusion cuisine (袋鼠, "pocket rat", is the Chinese for kangaroo -- be glad we're not trying to sell that name)
• Hopwurst: Nice off the grill with a beer
• "Hot Pockets": Do these need any further explanation?

This could be the leading edge of something big. With a little effort, we could crack the market for cute, Australian marsupial and monotreme meat products wide open. With a little rebranding, think of the export markets that might exist for wallaby ("boulder swine"), koala ("eucalyptus beef"), platypus ("Australian pond trout"), bandicoot ("pouch pheasant"), wombat ("dust lobster") and Tasmanian devil ("Tamanian bush lamb"). It's like printing money.

Frankly, my main complaint about kangaroo was that it was expensive. Screw rebranding; cut the price in half, and more people will eat it. But, in the end, the rebranding was only a magazine stunt. It looks like cooler, less-imaginitive heads will prevail when it comes to branding kangaroo:

Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia executive officer John Kelly told the Sydney paper that although the company sponsored the competition, it had no serious intention of changing the meat's name.

But, again, about changing that price?