Riding the Magnum Bandwagon

Over the last 3 weeks, so much has been said about this one brand of Ice Cream, so much attention has been given to it that the logic of it already escapes me. One would argue, its just good branding, an excellent job done by the marketing people from Unilever. To be able to create such big a hype and have people drooling over an Ice Cream is just a testament to how powerful the use of social media nowadays. You got to hand it over to them. 

What is Magnum then? What's so special about this ice cream that everyone just seem to want to get their mouths dirty and painted with it? Is it really that good? I had the rare pleasure of trying out this "royal" ice cream back in Singapore and I found nothing regal about it. Having a sweet tooth myself, Id say it was just okay. Its definitely not something that I would rave about.

Taste is relative though, as one might say. But in this case, taste is irrelevant. Forget the belgian chocolate. Taste has now become pop culture. Put anything on Twitter and Facebook and have people talking about it and once it becomes a trending topic, everyone would want to get their hands on it. It doesn't matter if its Aling Selya's Dinuguan or Mang Popoy's pisbol (fish ball). The key is to have people talking about it. It's a known fact. The more people talking about it, the more credibility the product gets regardless of its real value.

What is Magnum then? And what has it created? Magnum now represents a virus that is slowly killing intellect and is now reducing people into mere social status. Magnum represents the "IN" crowd. "I can buy this and eat it, I will take a picture of me eating it and upload it on Facebook and everyone will know I can shell out P50 for one special pinipig Ice cream."

Before there was Magnum, there was "Pompeo checked in at Eastwood" Kurdapya was at Bora, (Oh don't even start with that whole Boracay is BORA thing) Jun jun is now having lunch at Fish N' Co. Mercy just bought herself a new Ermes Bag "Ay shit! di ko nakita wala palang H!" (Oh Shit! Its missing the letter H!)

From the blog www.certifiedfoodies.com, the author Mhel wrote "For us regular peeps, Magnum Ice Cream is a very affordable high quality ice cream and we won’t mind paying Php 50 for it. Magnum is more of a luxury indulgence for people on a budget."

I won't go into a debate about categorizing who's in that "Regular Peeps" status bracket but yeah I guess I won't mind explaining this to families that struggles to live on P100 a day. Moreso, try validating the line "...it's the poor man's Haagen Dazs".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Magnum hater. I won't say no if someone would pay for it for me. I might even try buying it myself. But I surely won't go through all that trouble of holding off on the second bite just so I can take the best picture for my Facebook wall.

Our society is in decline. We don't seek for knowledge or information that matters anymore. We surround our lives with names and all things popular. Our society now cares for how one can fit in. And how easy it is to jump on a bandwagon. True, Magnum is just an ice cream, let the ones who can pay for it do whatever the hell they want with their money. In the end, what defines us as human beings isn't the ice cream or the food we eat and the clothes we wear. It's how we live our lives and affect others.

I just hope to see more of this.