I'm eating at Arby's the other day and notice a promotional poster for their newest item: Chicken Snackers. I mention it in passing to my lunch companion, who asks: "Why on earth would anyone want to eat a chicken's knackers?"
At first, this seems like a comic moment-- the classic sort of miscommunication between Brits and yanks that you'd see on Fawlty Towers. But it got me thinking about the number of products I've seen lately that are either double entendres or plays on vulgar expressions. Maybe there's a Brit executive at Wendy's now who is having a good laugh at us yanks? Think about it-- a snacker is the person who eats the food; the food item being eaten is called the snack.
Technically, the product should be called "Chicken Snacks," right? "Chicken Snackers" would be the people who come in and snack on chicken. You'd have to almost deliberately go out of your way to call it "Chicken Snackers"-- and I think there are enough phonetic savvy people in Arby's marketing department to know that "Chicken Snackers" and "Chicken's Knackers" sound identical if said rapidly enough.
Is this the "future face" of marketing-- snarky product names that have a laugh at the consumer? Or am I just being way too cynical about the product naming process some companies use?