Nesquik - but make it cereals

Ah the difficult life of a diabetic. Temptations everywhere. So Nesquik, courtesy of Nestle, but make it in cereal form. Now apparently the "classic" Nesquik - you know the milk chocolate one - was discontinued, due to "lack of demand and low sales" (according to the net), but what did not work as a drink can actually work as cereals (I think, so does Nestle). Which brings us to this unipole placed in an incredibly strategic - and pricey - place. But of course they had to add the bland "to the last bite". As if the message was not clear enough - which, to my mind, reminds me of Maxwell Coffee "good to the last drop" (wait, that's one chocolate drink winking to one coffee brand? Either am seeing too much or they are seeing too little).

Nestle purelife, and the science behind it

In case you never heard it, I am an agriculture engineer and an environmental economist. So basically, yes, I know my biology and my science. Which brings us to Nestle Purelife. The ad is huge, very huge. It portrays the whole panoply of shapes and forms in which Nestle Purelife comes. Good for them. I mean, how creative can you get when your brief it to show the different sizes? So the ad at least is orderly, nice, and of course, blue. It is however their line that caught my attention. "Hydrate your body. Refresh you mind." Now the first part is a no-brainer. But Nestle has its lawyers looking at every comma of their ads, which is why "refresh your mind" caught me off-guard. What does it mean? Technically and on-the-ground? Is it a play on words? Can it stand on its own legs in terms of a promise? Once more, knowing how involved the lawyers of Nestle are, I wondered how this one seeped through the net.

Tola (re)enters the Lebanese market

So ads are creeping back to Beirut. Sure, not in the same frequency that was prior to October 2019 and the start of the "thawra" but there is a palpable improvement. Take Tola - the Nestle chocolate "produced in Lebanon" with the cute line "el 7elo byerkhaslak" (which means "we'd drop the price of what's sweet just for you" - a riff on a local expression). Now here's what's interesting, this is not the first time Tola enters the Lebanese market. At the time it was owned by Rowntree's before the whole company got bought by Nestle (including Kit Kat and Lion Bar - their star products). Don't believe me? How about this artistic treatment below of the original mid-80s ad?

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly