Submitted by: dunno source via Oddly Specific
The lesson here being: if something’s boring, just rotate it 45 degrees to the left and get the party started!
I looked it up. That’s not even an actual diamond. Apparently Shreddies didn’t pass high school geometry either.
*Edit*
Ok, ok, I stand corrected. It IS a diamond.
Oddly Specific - Funny Signs 
apparently you didn’t pass either if you had to look it up.
I fail to see the point of marketing something as a diamond when it clearly isn’t one. Or is there a point, and I’m missing it somehow? :s
OMG, they did this on purpose! Do you really think that Nabisco didn’t notice this, or think they are fooling us?
Yes, Nabisco is well aware that diamond shreddies are just shreddies rotated 45 degrees. They produced billboards, TV commercials, and new boxes all showing this.
Nabisco is joking. The marketing campaign is the joke, not the “new” shape. They aren’t trying to fool us, they’re just having a bit of fun.
they’re just trying to draw attention to their product which has worked out very well for them i must say…
This is a joke. It is a marketing ploy by the makers of Shreddies cereal, which is apparently working: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shreddies.
It’s rotated 45 to the right, obviously.
😛 Of course! It’s so obvious now that you mention it!
O. M. G. I, like, didn’t even notice that! Thank you, friend, for your infinite wisdom.
No, it’s rotated 315 to the left, CLEARLY.
@todd – So what, the fact that it’s a joke makes it not funny? Sounds like they’re doing it wrong. Just like you, linking to a Wikipedia article that doesn’t exist. FAIL.
I think it’s clever marketing, I laughed.
@Who: That article does exist. Just remove the period at the end of the sentence that got caught in the link. “Fail.”
Isn’t a diamond (in geometry) technically a parallelogram having all sides of equal length (a rhombus). How is this not a diamond?
Good God do I hate this joke marketing. It’s DUMB and I feel like the humor is just too weak to be worth it.
lalalalalala, just trying to compensate for your negativity…
I like it, at least they’re trying to be funny… beats being told for the 500th time that sugary cereal is healthy because it has wholegrain.
Welcome, kids, to the nasty, terrible world of marketing. Here you see the typical billboard ad for Diamond Shreddies cereal, which indeed aren’t diamonds. The ad points out a change to the cereal, which is dubbed as “exciting!”. These marketers are trying to tell children how excited the world is if you just turn it around a bit! Next young children will be walking with their heads turned 45 degrees! I imagine what the commercial will be like:
“Tired of the boring, old Diamond Shreddies? *shows black and white scene of bored looked kids with old Diamond Shreddies* try the new Diamond Shreddies! *colored scene of happy kids taking a bite and smiling, saying “mmm”, etc.* the new Diamond Shreddies have a brand new shape, color, and most importantly, taste! Go to DiamondShreddies.com for a free sample or coupon!
Sigh. Advertising these days is pathetic.
I NEVER laughed as much as now with this f*ing signal!!
It’s a Canadian thing
Yay Canada !
The funniest part is that most people didn’t notice, and actually thought it was something new.
Actually, squares are also considered as rhombus (diamond) by the modern definition…
It’s a joke … and it’s funny.
If you don’t think so, perhaps you should lighten up a bit.
Yes, it is a diamond. A rhombus with right angles not only a diamond, but also a square.
so what shape is a kite?
does anyone want to buy some crispy rhombuses? no? fine, I guess I’ll go get some crunchy diamonds…
If it works for your sex life, why not for your cereal?
Seriously it’s classic Canadian Humour and yes that how you spell humour! Why do you think Canadian comedians are our number one export to the US. Apperently even Colbert has Canadian blood in him.
you go girl !…um…guy…
Getting the joke FAIL. *facepalm*
FINALLY! SOMEONE that isn’t ME found that they’re “new shape” is just a rotated square.
This isn’t meant to be taken seriously – the whole point of the ad is to mock itself.
In the UK this same product is marketed as having being knitted by old ladies in an elf-style factory.
yea i said the same thing when i saw that cereal in the store i work at… and i said the same thing, they just rotated it 45 degrees , to top it off they has one of those vote things asking what yhou prfer, the “origional” or “diamond”
*doesn’t get it.
The original piece of cereal is turned 45 degrees.
The fellow who created this add actual won awards in marketing; sales reached something like a 20 year high for those nasty unflavoured things.
But im not sure if it worked becuase its clever(debatable), or the fact that every third billboard around here was an ad for shreddies when they were promoting.
Wow – satire is lost on the stupid. Shreddies is satirizing the fact that food companies make stupid tiny changes to their product and herald it as a revolution in food.
If you didn’t understand this, then the joke is on you.
@Lauren good call haha
Yeah, I used to eat those plain boring old square Shreddies as a kid, and I was pretty excited about the new diamond ones. They’re clearly better. Once I had to buy a box of the square ones because the diamond ones were sold out at the supermarket (another clear sign of their obvious superiority). Ugh. No wonder they made the change!
Love the joke. Great when companies can laugh at themselves. Once technical question, though: are there specifications on what the angles of a diamond must be? For example, a parallelogram with two 60 degree and two 120 degree angles?
Different shapes have properties that give them their names, but some shapes can be called different names by definition. A square is a square because it has has 4 equal sides and 4 equal angles. A diamond has 4 equal sides but at LEAST 2 equal sets of angles. So a square is a square and a diamond, but a diamond is not a square. Say the four corners are lettered clockwise A,B,C,D (Were A and C are a set and B and D are a set). If you squished A and C together to, say 45˚, B and D would increase to 135˚. It would no longer be square, but it is still a diamond. In the picture above, the Shreaddy is a square and a diamond, regardless of rotation. It does not become a diamond because it already is one.
You can give figures multiple terms if it matches the definition. Such as a square being a square, a parallelogram, and a diamond at the same time because it matches all definitions, but a diamond is neither a square or a parallelogram because it does not match those definitions.
Does that make sense?
lol, didn’t see exactly what you were asking, but as long as the two 60˚ angles are opposite from each other and the 120˚ angles are opposite from each other, it can be classified as a diamond.
Scratch that last part about a diamond not being a parallelogram, I was just going off of what i remembered, then I look it up xD
I’m with all of the “lighten up” folks.
This is clever, light humor, imho.
Oh… and being someone with a Bachelor’s in Mathematics, too..
I’m also with the “that is a diamond” folks.
“The term diamond is another word for a rhombus. The term is also used to denote a square tilted at a 45 degrees angle. ”
Weisstein, Eric W. “Diamond.” From MathWorld–A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Diamond.html
I always buy the diamond Shreddies if I can, although they’ve stopped selling them now. Shreddies are dramatically cheaper per weight than all other processed cereals.
How is this “Canadian” humour? It’s humour. I’m sad for those of you who didn’t get this. They even give it away with the highly obvious “Boring” and “Exciting!” comments.
I’m not sure Shreddies was satirizing small changes. I think they just came up with a reasonably amusing way of reminding people that Shreddies exist and (I believe) are tasty. Good on them for recognizing that somehow the most effective ideas are the simplest.
I find it sad that there are people out there who are too dumb to realize that the Shreddies ‘diamonds’ campaign was an obvious joke.
A very funny obvious joke, too.
huhuhu this was taken in BC. You can tell ’cause it’s a Pattison billboard xD and the hills in the background =| Plus I’m pretty sure I’ve seen in on my way to Kelowna…or Vernon. I ain’t sure where I was headin’ but I saw this sign xD
I like those cereals, but the ad just… suck’s…
You say it is rotated 45 degrees to the left. Are you sure it is not to the left you socialist basterd?
um, me thinks you made a teeny tiny typo…
2 lefts does not make a right…
wow… Marketing, there are dozens of comments talking about Shreddies above mine, look at the fact this whole forum exists, I went to the link from Facebook… I’m in Australia, looking at a bill board from a road side in Canada? and talking about it. I think the marketing department won 100%, this is genius. FYI yes it is a ‘diamond’ shape.
its a diamond.
qqmore.
“I looked it up. That’s not even an actual diamond. Apparently Shreddies didn’t pass high school geometry either.”
You had to look it up to discover this and you say THEY fail?
also its a RHOMBUS since it has all equal length sides.
The marketing idea was actually quite hilarious in my opinion, I bought a box of Diamond Shreddies over normal Shreddies just so I could have the box to laugh at when I opened my pantry in the morning.
Also, hilarious edit. People do the darndest things. :3c
Haha I saw this same one in Canada when we went up for spring break. It was pretty much the most incredible poster ever
There is some great commentary about the “Diamond Shreddies” ad campaign in the “Age of Persuasion”, a radio show by an advertising guru. That show is posted as an mp3 here– fast-forward to 20:30 to hear the Shreddies part of it. http://www.cbc.ca/ageofpersuasion/2009/09/season_3_episode_the_myths_of.html
Search on YouTube for “Diamond Shreddies”, and you’ll see some good ads. My favorite:
G
Hitler did the same thing with the swastika
ZZZZZZZZZZING i was hoping i wasnt the only one thinking that
I think it’s because they’re sparkely now…
I like the idea of rotating something 45 degrees to make it better, it really worked for the Swastika. Now there’s a party!
What if what you’re turning is round, it looks the same 😦
perhaps then the option would be to turn it over…
It looked rotated 45 degrees to the right to me :-p
So up until point I was eating square “Diamond Shreddies”?…ugh…I feel so dirty.
……
More like rhombus shreddies, amirite?
Actually, your description is “oddly specific”. There is no need to state whether the rotation was to the left or to the right (not to mention that neither makes sense–it is unspecified which part of the object is moving right or left: you meant a clockwise or counterclockwise rotation). Simply stating that the object was rotated 45 degrees is sufficient and succinct.
Actually, Jason…you can tell from the direction of the slats on the face of the ____ Shreddy that it was either rotated 45* to the left, or 225* to the right. For what it’s worth, it was also magnified slightly. Perhaps the author was not specific enough. Hmm? Hmm? What do you say to that?!?
it is indeed not a diamond.
Diamonds dont have 4 equal sides or angles. They have 2 sets of equal sides and 1 set of equal angles
You’re my hero.
It might look silly but in fact this was a major marketing win. Shreddies was doing bad and they didn’t have the means to or the interest in developing a new product to entice customers so in stead they came up with this new presentation and naming of the product. As the story goes people loved it and some even claimed the diamond shreddies tasted better even though there wasn’t any difference apart from the new package and name.
The shreddies marketing was covered in this ted talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html
WAAAT?! IS NAWT TEH DIUMUND! It’s a rotated RHOMBI! Sorry, rhombus.
I must note that the fact that anyone cares whether or not it is, in fact, rotated this way or that or exactly a diamond shape is far more “oddly specific” than anything our lovely narrator could possibly have said.
But diamond shreddies are so AWESOME!
holy crap, a 45º spin, who was the marketing genius who though of such an incredible misconception of originality?!
Seriously, how the fuck do you not know what a diamond looks like?
Better yet, what in the flying fuck did you think a diamond actually was? If you thought it was the round one, double facepalm yourself into unconciousness, or if that’s too difficult, just go play in traffic.
The fuck pissed in your cereal, Razz? Damn.
The new one is sooo not a diamond. Look at that thing real close and tell me the top and bottom corners aren’t skewed in opposite directions from the center, meaning that the sides are uneven in length.
Yepp, turning things 45 degrees is a real masterstroke. I mean – just look at the popularity boost the swastika symbol had once certain …beings rotated it.
They also encircled it, though, so it might’ve been this that did the trick.