I'm always fascinated by these kinds of product rivalries, and always assume they arouse great passions among the people involved, and meanwhile the rest of us really don't notice or care. I think there are people at Campbell's who hate Progresso with all of their hearts and souls. Late at night, they sit in their offices on the 75th floor of the Massive Building overlooking Times Square, glasses of scotch in their hands, hair tousled, eyes low and dark, muttering, "Progresso ... oh, Progresso, you will pay. You have more sodium in your Chicken Stars than has ever been in ours, and you know it. I will rip the cover off your facade and expose your true face to the teeming masses ... or something along those lines ... so help me God!" And then thunder lights the sky as they thrust their arms into the air and laugh maniacally.
Or maybe it's just a committee of gray-suited people in a white, flourescent-lit windowless room, saying "According to this chart, Progresso has disparaged the sodium content of our soups. According to this next graph, we can now make ads disparaging their sodium content. According to this graph, this decision has now been made. And according to this graph, this meeting is adjourned and we must all now go to Chili's and eat small taco-shaped objects covered with ranch dressing and barbeque ribs." Then there is two seconds of staccato applause.
But I don't like to think that. I like to think that there a lot of people expending a lot of energy and time -- and indeed, their whole lives -- into things like proving that Progresso actually has more sodium in their soups than Campbell's. Meanwhile, the rest of us are completely unaffected and often don't even hear about it. We just buy whatever seems cheapest. It's beautiful somehow -- we're such an affluent society that we can subsidize tremendous dramas that seem terribly momentous to some people but actually have no affect on anything, ever. I love it.
