Carnation cupcakes

I've seen those bus banners for months in the Bronx, if not years. Certainly since last fall. I'd be annoyed if I really cared.

I mean, I can't imagine too many people that want to buy it. It's a plain (all-white) gimmick (ooh, a shaped bouquet--for their next trick they'll twist balloons to look like lettuce heads) bunch o'flowers. If there are people out there who think it doesn't just blandly waste space, I haven't heard from them.

I'm not sure you're nuts, Mark. I looked for cupcakes on their site and found instead a giant $40 St. Patrick's Day fortune cookie.

"Send "lots o' luck" to your favorite lads and lassies with our delicious, oversized St. Patrick’s Day fortune cookie!"

http://tinyurl.com/bj2zc4

I was with my girlfriend when we saw one of these. Noted: If either of us received one of these, we would be disappointed. Much prefer cupcakes. Also, do you have any idea how many cupcakes (even expensive good ones) you could buy for $24.99? Total waste of adspace.

Actually, this is perfect for these times. $25 for -any- sort of flower arrangement for delivery is cheap. It's normally $60 or more just to get a basic arrangement sent to someone. And women still love getting flowers, even if it is wasteful. I'm sure this will do well.

I'm with Yoshi: I'd be terribly disappointed it wasn't a real cupcake!

Did it promise "natural" or "sustainable"?

(And what's not "sustainable" about a re-usable cupcake holder, if that matters?)

I'm with Stan. Delivered flowers cost a fortune, and $25 is, comparatively, inexpensive for that good.

The real key would be to send it to your mate at work, and have a real cupcake waiting at home for the cupcake holder. Best of both worlds.

Just to clarify - it's $24.99 for the flowers and another $11.99 for the delivery. Crazy.

Not sustainable, possibly partly natural. I have to believe that our (cumulative) desire for silly stuff like this will last well through this recession and the next.

This product like many other "start ups" today subscibes to the misguided advertiser's philosophy of "If you build it, they will come."

Cupcakes are hot, especially after Lazy Sunday. There are still a lot of people to whom $36.98 won't sound like that much money, less than the price of going to a movie and paying for parking, popcorn and snacks, for example. And small can be good in a cubicle environment. Sounds like you're just not their target market.

Yeah when I first saw these ads my heart skipped a beat because I thought they were selling real cupcakes. Then the excitement quickly wore off when I realized that they were just...flowers. To me it looks like they're trying to jump on the cupcake bandwagon several years too late. (Sex and the City seems so long ago doesn't it?) And they also managed to fail at capturing the youthful, girly appeal of a cupcake as well. Instead of one giant cupcake with boring white frosting, why not a half dozen mini bouquets in an array of pastel colors? Planted in little reusable cupcake liner pots? And packaged in a pink box with a bow?I don't know any girl who wouldn't LOVE receiving something like that! If you're going to go cupcakes, go squeal-worthy.

I'd be crestfallen if I were sent mock cupcakes at any cost. I'm not a New Yorker (I live in Downtown L.A.) and we have a place here called Joan's on Third that makes these marshmallow creme numbers...anyway, fake cupcakes are lame.

Marketing to the mass affluent has nothing to do with being sustainable or inexpensive. It's about exclusivity and oneupmanship.

The people that buy these arrangements buy based on novelty and for the simple reason that they’re bored with regular flowers.

In marketing, people buy for their reasons, not for the reasons of the marketer or for the reasons of other people.

An arrangement like this sells because it’s different. The flower company is buying bus ads for two simple reasons: they get great visibility, and because THEY WORK.

The fact that few people in this thread would buy them is not the point.

Seth Godin urges people to make their products remarkable, meaning, to make their products worthy of being remarked on. The entries here prove he’s right, and they prove that flowers in cupcake holders are worth remarking on.

They stand out.

They gain attention.

Somehow, I don’t think there would be this much typing if the ads were for a bland, vanilla product presented in a bland, vanilla way.

This is direct response marketing at its best: the message elicits a direct response.

How many other ads can claim the same is true for their product or message? Not many. The best way to stand out in a crowd is to buck all trends.

They are visually and mentally insulting, but I'm Canadian. I think Americans call us socialists now, and I love your president.