FreeStyle Lite (Lite? Are they affiliated with Miller Lite,
by any chance?) is a brand of glucose testing strips and meters where their big
selling point is that their test strips actually allegedly actively suck your
blood up easily (they used to refer to this as “targeting the blood”, but they
made them sound more like blood terrorists, or blood identity thieves, or
something like that; so they have corrected this and started using another
term. But what it really does is suck up
the blood, so they really ought
to say that!), so it’s less of a pain-in-the-neck
(or finger, as the case may be) to use them. Also, since it’s easier, it
requires less blood to test: they claim it only needs one third of the blood
demanded by other blood glucose testers. That’s pretty darn amazing, if you ask
me. (If it’s true. And I saw it in a commercial on TV, so it must be!) And I
thought you did ask me, although
admittedly it could have just been one of the voices in my head asking me, just
for a change of pace from when they command me to kill. (It does get kind of
boring when all they ever do is command me to kill. I mean, seriously: they’re
just like a broken record sometimes! {Oh, sorry: is that too outdated of a
reference to make nowadays? Do people still know what records even are anymore?})
But this selling point of requiring one third the amount of
blood as before, along with the fact that these test strips actively suck up
the blood, combined with the (proposed slogan) statement that they’re “less of
a pain-in-the-neck to use”, all add up incontrovertibly to one logical
conclusion: FreeStyle Lite really ought to ditch the butterfly and switch to
employing a skinny vampire as their new mascot! It would all make perfect sense
here, wouldn’t it? Then the vampire mascot character could also be the
spokesman and the announcer’s voice, and he could dress and sound like Bela
Lugosi from Dracula, and speak in that
great Hungarian accent about all the benefits of using FreeStyle Lite test
strips, and how they take less blood, etc. And he would be a cartoon character
to make him seem less threatening, and so he could be really thin-looking in
that way cartoon characters can without seeming unrealistic or unhealthy. (Even
though cartoon vampires are the most vicious kind! But they only drink red ink.
So maybe they’re not so dangerous after all, unless you’re an illustrator!) But
as vampires are so associated with blood, and blood glucose testers are also so
associated, it would be very appropriate to bring these two blood-drinkers
together as a marketing strategy. Plus, it would be really fun! (And after all,
aren’t vampires all the rage now? So it’s perfect!)
Okay, this is just a joke, but I think they really ought to
consider making a silly alternate version of their products for horror movie
fans where they use this vampire mascot concept, and make the test strips look
like long white fangs, and the tester meter thingy look like the profile of a
vampire’s head with the fang exposed and sticking downward. Then people using
these devices could play little silly vampire games with testing their blood
glucose level, and it might be fun enough to help distract from the fact that
testing blood hurts and sucks. Plus, the skinny vampire spokesman could say
silly things like that he’s on a diet now, so he sucks up less of your blood,
but as a result he sucks it up even more quickly and respectfully than other
test strips, and that also it’s “less of a pain-in-the-neck” to use this system.
(And they could advertise it in specific subject-appropriate venues, like in
movie theater ads accompanying the previews of horror movies, or in horror
movie fanzines, just to avoid having people who might find this approach
disturbing or distasteful encounter this particular ad campaign.)
Also, they could make meters that look like hot female
vampires, and they could have co-branded meters that tie-in with specific
vampire movie franchises, like Twilight,
Underworld (wouldn’t it be fun to
have a Kate Beckinsale-shaped blood glucose meter? Or how about a Robert
Pattinson one?), Dark Shadows,
etc. It really might make it less stressful for teens who are scared of or
uncomfortable with doing their blood tests to have this silly joke to think
about, rather than the grim reality of living with diabetes.
Hey, maybe they could even make werewolf ones with a
lenticular cover for the meter, so you could watch it transform into the
werewolf from the human character by tilting the meter, and fans of the Lycans
in the Underworld series, and “Team
Jacob” from Twilight could have
fun with this too. And for older people, they could have Lon Chaney, Jr. as The
Wolf Man, or Henry Hull as The
Werewolf of London! It might even be the
case that fans of these movies might want to buy these things just for fun as
collectibles even if they don’t need to use them for blood testing. (Heck: I’d
want to buy them just for fun!)
And, of course, naturally, they could have these things put
into vampire (and werewolf) movies as product placement, with some vampire’s intended victim
managing to ward off an attack when the vampire is flattered that their
prospective meal has a blood glucose meter with the vampire’s face on it. (“I
can’t eat you: you’re a fan!”)
BTW: I have suggested this type of thing before in previous
posts, and here they are, if you’re interested:
