How Toothfish Became a Luxury Dinner
play along: to cooperate with or pretend to agree with someone or something, even if you have doubts or know it is not real
Shreddies cereal was the same small square shape for decades, and there was nothing new to say about it. In 2008, a 26-year-old advertising agency intern joked that the cereal was not a square. It was a diamond. Nancy Vonk, the agency’s creative director, heard the joke and told him to make it into a new sales campaign.
The result was a national advertising launch for “Diamond Shreddies.” Every ad showed the same square cereal, turned 45 degrees. A Combo Pack offered both shapes in one box. Nobody was fooled. Canadians knew exactly what was happening, and they played along. Limited edition boxes sold out. The campaign is credited with an 18 percent jump in market share, and the advertising intern was given a job.
Thirty years earlier, a superficial rename worked just as well but this time it wasn’t a joke. In 1977, an American fish seller named Lee Lantz was in a port in Chile. He saw a large fish with sharp teeth called the Patagonian toothfish. Lantz knew no American would order a toothfish so he renamed it “Chilean sea bass.” The fish is not a bass, but the new name sounded much more palatable and it became a commercial success.
In 2001, a food magazine named it dish of the year. It became so popular that overfishing became a problem. The next year, environmental groups launched a campaign to save it. Even they called it Chilean sea bass.
Sample sentences
My kids planned a surprise party for me, and I knew about it for weeks, so I just played along.
I don’t agree with the new plan, but I’ll play along for now and see what happens.
She refused to play along when her manager asked everyone to say the meeting had been useful.
