The other day I opened the cabinet to grab some cold cereal. I wasn’t sure which specific cereal I was going to have, I just knew that a bowl full of yummy not-too-sweet flakes with some almond milk splashed over them would be tasty. Probably I’d slice a banana over the cereal.

So, surveying the candidates with an open mind, I was confronted with… anonymous boxes. Black-and-white panels of nutrition information. I selected a cereal and resolved to put it away with the other edge showing, so my poor tired eyes could identify that box better the next time.

It turns out the other side was no better, and I realized that all the cereal boxes in the cabinet used the side panels as junk space.

Big mistake, I say. In the case of cereal, all the marketing is on the front of the box, with stuff on the back of the box to keep the kids without TV in the kitchen occupied. The packaging designers are missing an important opportunity.

There are two phases to marketing a box of cereal; first you get it off the store shelf and into the shopping cart. That’s what the front panel does. But the marketing isn’t over then; cereals are still competing to get from the box to the bowl. The winner of that contest empties the box faster. It’s about selling the next box.

That competition is all about the side panels. If I were king of a cereal company, the boring stuff would be on the back, and the side panels would be devoted exclusively to “Hey! Look at me! I’m yummy!”

The Title of this episode commonly appears as fine print in television commercials, where the advertiser wants to make sure no one holds them responsible for someone else being stupid.

I may add to this post, but here’s the one that forced me (yes, forced) to write this little episode:

• Do not attempt an automobile collision while someone is hanging from the side of one of the vehicles, on the side of the collision.
• Do not jump out of an airplane while holding a sphere of electricity and then hurl said sphere into a cloud that you are falling toward, filling it with lightning.

I know you were going to.

As an employee of your favorite fruit-flavored gadget company, I find myself noticing some interesting things about the way my employer promotes itself. For instance, there are the buildings of Infinite Loop. There are signs at the entrances to the campus, but on the buildings there are no logos.

No logos on any of the other buildings Apple occupies. No logos on the big gray busses that glide up and down the freeways, taking workers to and from Cupertino. (The busses have WiFi, of course.) No logos on the shuttles to the railway stations or on the bikes you can check out to travel between buildings.

You’d never know, driving on I-280, that you were passing through a company that has more cash on hand than the Unites States.

So why wouldn’t a company as intent on spreading its brand take advantage of putting their logo on stuff they already own? I think because it would almost become a joke in iCupertino. There would be an apple on every damn thing in the city. HP used to have a big presence here, but now Apple’s new mother ship will be built on their old campus. (Business note: few places in the world will have greater demand for sandwiches and beer than the one-block radius around the new Apple campus.) Seagate’s here, and plenty of other companies, and they put up the signs. Apple just is.

But none of that is why I sat down to write this little episode. I’m watching baseball right now, and an ad for the iPad 2 came on. It’s a nice, friendly ad, and one of the little vignettes it plays is of a very small child writing his first words with his finger.

The camera moves over the iPad (2!) as the child completes the ‘n’ in ‘lion’. His penmanship is pretty good. (I know it’s a ‘he’ because he’s wearing blue.)

Of course, Lion is also the name of the operating system Apple released last week. Coincidence, I’m sure.

I was waiting at a traffic light today, thinking about the name of the car in front of me. Thinking about it more, perhaps, than the Chrysler marketing department did.

The car is a modern, sporty car, with aggressive and unique styling. It looks fun to drive. The name: Chrysler Crossfire.

Crossfire. As in: “If you get caught in the crossfire, you could be killed.” Crossfire. Military planning is filled with ways to get your enemy in crossfire.

Though maybe it’s a good name. Maybe the Chrysler Crossfire is a car that’s pretty exciting — unless you’re in it.

Range Rover has introduced a new version of their suburban assault vehicle, a massive beast that will get the kids to soccer practice on time at the cost of $100 per quickly-depleted tankful: the Range Rover Sport. I’m pretty sure they didn’t intend irony when they gave it that moniker, but I have to believe the marketing team that blessed one of the least-sporty vehicles on the road today with that appellation must have had a good laugh when all was said and done.

And… it will work.