This might be a little off topic, but sometimes I just have to vent a bit.

My wife, who does most of the shopping around our house, recently bought a box of Ritz Crackers.

Let me just stop right here for a second.

I have had a love affair with Ritz Crackers since my earliest days. Give me a sleeve of Ritz Crackers and a brick of colby or sharp cheddar and I’ll park my fanny on the couch for a good thirty minutes polishing every last one of them off. The tasty goodness of a Ritz just can’t be beat. It’s the mainstay of all American crackers. Aw, heck, it is THE AMERICAN cracker! The grocery chains and discount stores have tried to duplicate them without any success (although Wal-Mart comes close).

Back to my vent. It seems that due to the infinite wisdom of some product marketing geniuses at Kraft (a.k.a. Nabisco) they have decided to make sweeping changes to my Ritz cracker. Yeah, I know they’ve had many different flavors and a whole wheat variety for a while… they’re OK, nothing special. But they’ve gone and mucked up my CLASSIC Ritz! And to add insult to injury, they’re dubbing it “The Best Tasting Ritz Ever!” Right. And my dirty socks are the best smelling socks, ever.

Apparently it wasn’t buttery enough for the pointy-head marketing dopes who decided that CLASSIC means “let’s change this into something completely different” and added a couple of tubs of fake-butter flavored goop into the batter. At first I thought the cream cheese had gone funky… but unfortunately it was Kraft’s marketing goofs that went funky. I literally had to through my box away they tasted so bad. This has been MY cracker for several decades. A mainstay. The cracker I rely on when I need to eat vast quantities of peanut butter or cheese. I must admit, I feel a little betrayed, but mostly sad. Like my dog just died or something.

This whole thing reminds me of the famous Coca-Cola fiasco from a couple of decades ago. You woulda thunk that every product marketing pro in the world would have learned from that debacle. I guess not.

I sense I’m digressing, so let me end with this question for you: Are your marketing folks looking to change you or your products into something you’re not? If so, show them the can (like I did my box of Ritz).

FYI: I wrote Kraft about their mistake… Going into almost as much detail as I have here. They responded with a nothing more than a generic form letter and a coupon for any one box of Nabisco crackers. Was that supposed to help me feel better?

I’m off to find a new cracker friend.