You know what’s stupid? Brands. Brands are stupid. I know we all have our favorites or whatever, and that’s fine, but as a whole? As a cultural influence? Sure, they have plenty of power over what we do and think and encounter on a daily basis, but deep down? It’s all pretty ridiculous. And this is never more apparent than when the end of the year rolls around and those companies that do vague shit with and for brands for big money start telling us all what brands have been doing the most or growing the most or whatever. Some of those lists of brands have been coming out now, and there’s no car brands on there at all. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be opportunities for a clever carmaker!
[Editor’s Note: Just a warning: This blog is a bit unhinged. Jason sometimes gets this way, and I’m not about to try to stop him; last time I did, my 401K savings somehow halved. Still unsure how that happened. -DT]
Here, you can see the report on the Fastest Growing Brands for 2022 from some outfit called Morning Consult, which I guess is respected in the industry blah bah whatever. Here’s the report, if you want to read it, which you don’t. Want to know the fastest growing brands of this year, according to whoever these guys are? Here you go!
Hey, I bet you’re thinking, what the fuck is this? Great question! Meta is the biggest growing brand? Meta? Who gives a shit about Meta? It’s Facebook, okay, that’s huge, but Meta as a brand? Are people talking about that? Why?
I use Adobe products daily, but I do not give a shit about them as a brand. Do I? Maybe. I don’t know. Chobani? Office Depot? Nobody is into Office Depot or that yogurt, are they? What does all this even mean?
I’m gonna grab my fifth Four Loko and really consider the impact these brands have on my life. Crocs? Google fucking Sheets? That’s a brand? Milwaukee makes good tools, okay. And I’ve enjoyed my time with Doritos, so thank you Frito Lay.
What the fuck is Celsius?
I think the real standout here, though, is Great Value Cream Cheese, the Walmart store brand of cream cheese. It’s to Kirkland Cream Cheese what Kirkland is to Philadelphia Cream Cheese. I’m sure I’ve had it before, which is why I can say it’s the cream cheese of people who know their worth, and it’s not a lot, if we’re honest. It pairs well with a plastic butter knife that will snap in twain at the point where there’s a fake ridge where a blade would meet a handle were it not one piece of molded plastic, and a rubbery bagel you stole (I saw you).
This is one of 2022’s fastest growing brands. Because everyone you know has Great Value Cream Cheese mania, and that’s what they want to talk to you about, all the fucking time. Great Value Cream Cheese! It’s what I’m into now, ha ha, I know, right? Oh, the blue paintbrush swoosh on my shirt? You know what that’s from, right? Yes! Great Value Cream Cheese! Up high, my man, I knew you’d know what’s up!
See, I’m thinking a struggling carmaker needs to fucking leap on the Great Value Cream Cheese bandwagon and get in on this hotness while its piping fucking hot! Like, say, Mitsubishi! Imagine the possibilities of a Great Value Cream Cheese Edition Mirage!
Think about it! Mitsubishi could take their already great value Mirage and pair it with the Greatest Value, Great Value Cream Cheese, giving the Mirage a kicky stripe kit reminiscent of the recognizable-anywhere blue paint swoosh, and put the whole exciting Great Value Cream Cheese logo, which inside Walmart sources told me took nearly 35 minutes to design, right there on the door!
They could also pack the glove box full of Great Value Cream Cheese! This thing will sell itself! The only problem will be for owners to figure out how to keep the hordes of horny, excited people of every type from swarming the car, delirious with hot, humid Great Value Cream Cheese mania, eager to just be some part of the glory of Great Value Cream Cheese, especially in Mitsubishi Mirage form.
Are you curious about the methodology Morning Consult used to find these amazing results? Me neither! But here it is, anyway:
Morning Consult’s Fastest Growing Brands rankings are determined by measuring growth in the share of consumers who say they would consider purchasing from a brand over the course of the year. Morning Consult Brand Intelligence tracks consumer perceptions on thousands of brands on a daily basis, forming the foundation of this report.
Growth was determined by taking the share of consumers who said they were considering purchasing from the brand from Oct. 1-31, 2022, and subtracting the share who said the same from Jan. 1-31, 2022. The Fastest Growing Brands 2022 analysis was conducted among 1,689 brands. Sample sizes ranged from 200 to 27,398 responses collected among U.S. adults, with respective margins of error ranging from 1 to 6 percentage points.
Morning Consult began tracking several brands for the first time in 2022, and many were added midway through months, resulting in smaller sample sizes in the first month of tracking. In calculating the change, we removed data for the first month of tracking if that month had less than two-thirds of the average sample size for the other months.
In making lists specific to demographics, we removed any brand that had a sample size of less than 200 for any demographic group. MTN DEW RISE ENERGY was removed from the analysis since its brand name in MCBI changed from “MTD DEW RISE ENERGY” to “MTN DEW ENERGY” in April 2022, resulting in a 20-point increase in awareness (from 52% aware to 72% aware between the weeks of April 11 and April 25, 2022).
So, you know, bullshit. Great!
It looks like Autozone made the list for Gen X at number seven, and WD-40 made the Millennial list at number six, and that’s about as automotive as these lists get.
Oh this is all so stupid. Why did I write this? Oh, I remembered: because I have Great Value Cream Cheese mania, and we’d be absolute fools not to jump on it, stat. America wants more more more Great Value Cream Cheese, and there’s no reason an alert carmaker can’t turn this into cold, wet cash!
Mitsubishi, just leave my check by that urinal we both know. Shove it between the big pipe and the wall. Thank you.
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I like that Great Value Mirage livery more than I should
Well, if the rent wasn’t too damn high and companies would stop laying people off, maybe fancy-pants Philadelphia *would* make the list. We can’t even spring for Great Value around here! I have to walk 15 miles uphill both ways to steal milk because the Mitsubishi is throwing a code, the 944 is in pieces and the 411 is a 411.
Since no one else has mentioned it: Major League Baseball!?! That’s a growing brand? Is there anyone in North America who doesn’t know what baseball is?
Maybe more people are requesting express written consent.
After resisting since your inception, you’ve finally provoked me to create an account by neglecting to question why Chobani is on the list TWICE. If they do something besides greek yogurt, I’ll be darned if I’ll further contribute to awareness by looking it up.
Also I have now been forced to recognize the Google Fucking Sheets logo, which I assumed would be sexier.
I guess I’m glad this study has brought to light the DeWalt / Milwaukee generational divide.
And what the heck is STōK?
STōK is caffeine. They make a coffee-creamer sized ‘shot’ to enhance your morning coffee. Perfect for long trips: pull over at a rest stop, set your alarm for 40 min, down the shot, then doze off. When the alarm goes off, you’re ready for another few hours of windshield time. 7-11s in my area have them.
I think I have also seen bottles with the brand name on -similar to the Starbucks ones I guess. I dunno: I like my heart >inside< my chest, so never tried one
Am I incorrect in assuming that everyone on the planet hates Live Nation…aka Ticketmaster? Here they are on a “fast growing brand” list.
Of course I have no idea what “Stok” is. And how is “Chobani Greek Yogurt” different than “Chobani”? Isn’t Chobani all greek yogurt?
And also call me surprised that Office Depot is still in business.
This reads like it was written by cocaine. Not someone *on* cocaine, by cocaine itself
“last time I did, my 401K savings somehow halved.”
Wait, you guys have 401ks?
I need image pisting so I can make memes damnit!
And an edit button so I can not type pisting and realize it only after I hit send.
“What the fuck is Celsius?” Something Americans have been asking for 200 years.
wait is this an ad for Great Value Cream Cheese? guerilla marketing is getting intense
I could use a gallon of Bacardi right about now…
Any what kind of idiot still buys Beats, the world’s worst headphones?
Louis Vuitton is overpriced French crappola.
And if I had to pick a brand it would be Astroglide.
Astroglide has earned my brand loyalty for no reason other than how it was created by a Space Shuttle engineer who felt one of the potential rocket coolants he’d come up with and thought, “You know what this would be great for? Butt sex.”
Spewed on that, almost said choked! Oops
You just wrote an entire article about Great Value Cream Cheese. You said “Great Value Cream Cheese” 16 times in your article. I don’t know your readership numbers, but I’m guessing you have just MASSIVELY grown the brand awareness of Great Value Cream Cheese. You’ve practically ensured, through your “I’ve-just-hit-my-thumb-with-a-hammer-and-need-to-scream-about-something-to-make-me-feel-better” rant, that Great Value Cream Cheese will make the same list next year. It might even overtake Meta. I hope you like Bentonville, Arkansas, because it’s the only place you’ll be welcome in the entire country once Zuckerberg is done with you.
Thanks for making my lunch break so enjoyable lol now every time I see that brand of cream cheese, I will be thinking on the mitsubishi mirage great value edition
I mean, Digiorno, Dewalt, Captain Morgan, WD40, and Frito Lay are all commonly used together when planning on a shitheap to buy from Meta Marketplace.
You mean I’m not the only one who likes WD-40 on Lays potato chips?!?
This shit right here is why I come here. Jason’s sense of the absurd is unmatched and a beautiful thing.
Somebody sounds a little salty that the Autopian didn’t make the list.
I should have heeded your warning that I wouldn’t want to read the report, but my curiosity got the best of me, and I wondered how this company determined “growth”. The report states the following:
“Morning Consult’s Fastest Growing Brands rankings are determined by measuring
growth in the share of consumers who said they would consider purchasing from a
brand over the course of the year.”
Welp. That’s something, I guess. It got me wondering how different brands could make the list. Meta kind of makes sense since their company rebranding is still relatively new. It’s possible that early in the year, poll respondents said: “Meta? WTF is that???” but later in the year responded: “Oh, that’s the Facebook parent company? Yeah, I have a Facebook account.”
But now I’m trying to figure out how they even defined “brands”. How the heck are Meta, Google Sheets, Frito Lay, and Great Value Cream Cheese all considered the same level of “brand”???
That’s enough mental energy spent on this “study”. Allow me to shift to talking about the car. I got a Mitsubishi Mirage (the hatch, not the sedan shown here) as a rental when my car was in the shop a few years ago. It unexpectedly brought a smile to my face whenever I drove it. First, it came in a nice bright shade of blue. Second, it was deceptively tiny. While it was shaped like an SUV, it was much littler, and if I happened to have a passenger riding shotgun, our shoulders and knees were often touching. Finally, it was much lower powered than what I was used to. While it didn’t feel unsafely slow at any point, it just tickled me to watch the car sloooowly respond and crawl up to speed, even when I put my foot to the floor. Driving a slow car fast could be fun!
That could be a good business opportunity for Mitsu and WallyWorld to sell a Great Value-branded Mirage. Just hang the keys from those pegboard displays near the checkout with a price ending in 88. Or maybe lock them in a case with the video games and razorblades if theft is a problem. Pick up your car in the back of the parking lot near the Winnebagos when you’ve finished shopping.
I unironically enjoy a Mirage hatch. Like, it’s a goofy little go-kart. I also got one as a rental once and it didn’t take a single corner on all four-wheels. I used it as a paddock runabout since it was barely bigger than some of the golf carts teams use to haul broken parts/fuel/whatever. It’s frickin’ great. Highly underrated as a hooning experience. Only mildly terrifying on the freeway.
I mean… Lexus made a Sriracha Edition IS, so anything is possible.
oh yeah, the IS-F is quite spicy 😀
As a Gen-Xer, I can confirm….I am f**king stoked about both Google Sheets AND Microsoft Excel! In fact, I have spreadsheets open in both right now while I’m dunking my dorito-crusted krispy kreme in my bacardi and san pellegrino cocktail! All things Gen-Xers love!!!
Also foolish millenials….actually believe Digiorno’s tastes just like delivery. Dumb f**king kids….
I think they millennial list is wrong. Where the heck is parsh?!
Oh. My.
When the editor’s note said this was unhinged, I expected something wonderful, but this, this was a masterpiece.
I’m going to go critically think about what brand I feel sufficiently passionate about to wrap my truck in their logo. Is there an Autopian hood decal in the merch store?
I’d buy an Autopian car decal of some sort.
I’d buy one. Then constantly search surrounding traffic for other good people with them on their cars.
Just like old “Car Talk” stickers.
I think the real shocker here is that people are considering buying from T-Mobile.
I’ve been a customer for 15 years without any issues that weren’t swiftly resolved by customer service. Coverage used to suck outside metro areas, but that’s no longer a problem.
Wow, good for you, fingers crossed it stays that way. Personally I’ve had several ridiculously bad experiences with them to the point that I swore more than a decade ago that I’d never touch anything with a pink “T” on it ever again.
Okay, fine. I created an account after lurking for months because this is the shit I’m here for. I see you, I like what you’re on about, and you got my email address. Well done you beautiful motherfucker.
I’ve ordered the damned shirt while I’m at it. Crap, I guess I’m into this weirdness for a spell.
One of us. One of us.
Also, based on your username I am going to assume there is a “rare” c5 vette in your garage.
Close! An LT Chevy Sonic, so ‘Vette adjacent!
You sir probably have money in your 401k. I someday hope to join your ranks.
I scrolled through the report, saw “Gaylord Hotels,” giggled, and then debated whether or not we should shed the chains of gay aristocracy or if I should try to get a gay lordship of my own.
I think there’s an island off of Scotland that sells those.
Isn’t a Gaylord just a big metal trash receptacle you can haul around with a forklift and dump into larger metal trash receptacles?
I’m pretty sure you can buy them on U-Line.
DT you gotta keep the chains of JT and let him do this kind of shit more often because it is always fantastic.
off* god damn it.
I dunno, the chains of Jason Torchinsky might be some sort of religious artifact for some people. David Tracy, you must keep the chains of Jason Torchinsky and ensure rants tangentially related to cars are posted, would you rathers are offered, and taillights are never forgotten. May the rust on the chains never destroy them.
Thank you for making my typo infinitely better. Love the idea of The Chains of Jason Torchinsky. One of the most sacred relics of the Holy Autopian Empire.
Maybe even a movie “the chains of Jason Torchinsky”
Don’t go down Into the basement!
These sorts of things always remind me of the xkcd comic about the “fastest-growing” religion.
https://xkcd.com/1102/