Just for kicks, I thought I would take CBC's Test the Nation IQ Test tonight (scored 121 in case you were wondering) and couldn't help but laugh at Quaker's ridiculous attempt at brand integration. Prior to taking the test, you are asked a series of questions such as age, sex, location etc. to help the program calculate your score. There are also some not so relevant questions such as hair colour, favourite spectator sport, alcohol preference, etc. that I assume will be used as interesting cross-references once the database has been populated (i.e. Blonde's have the highest average IQ, Alberta is the smartest Provence, Beer drinkers are stupid, etc..). However, the very last question of "are you trying to lower your cholesterol levels?" comes completely out of left field and is generously brought to us by Quaker Oats. WTF? Now I'm all for brand integration but this is just silly. What relevance could this possibly have to an IQ test? I would be very curious to see how Quaker is going to use this information... I can just picture their marketing team huddled around pages of fancy graphs in a stuffy neutral coloured board room trying to figure what to do now that they know the average IQ of someone trying to lower their cholesterol. Am I missing something here?
