Back at my first job in advertising I worked with a copywriter who handled the Van De Kamp Bakery account. Every week she had to write descriptive copy that made a number of different bakery items sound delicious.
After a couple months of this she had run out of new ways to describe something as flaky and tasty. So she resorted to repeated use of the onomonopia “Mmm”. She was very particular about the number of m’s in Mmm. It had to be exactly three. Not two. Not four. Three and three only. One week she got in a huge, screaming argument with the art director because he added a fourth m in order to make a line of copy look more balanced. She went crazy, screaming, “There are only three m’s in Mmm.”
Well, if that copywriter were here in Stavanger, she might be tempted to make it Mmmmmmm.
Check out the item in the photo above: There simply aren’t enough m’s to adequately describe caviar in a toothpaste tube. I’m not a fan of caviar’s taste nor texture, but I know that devotees are willing to pay small fortunes for Beluga caviar. I just looked it up. The going rate is $200-300 per ounce.
This, obviously, is not Beluga. How do I know? Because it costs $1.30 per tube.
Caviar in a tube, however, is not the oddest culinary delight to be found in Norway. That honor goes to a restaurant we saw advertised in Bergen. The ad touted the fact that the restaurant was, and I quote, “Located next to the leprosy museum.”
Mmmmmmmm.
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