for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, May 6-8 in Palm Springs.
Summer reading lists are the worst, aren’t they? Who wants to actually, like, think during break?
Yet schools across America assign kids laundry lists of books to slog through like “1984” and “The Scarlet Letter,” assignments that suck the fun right out of summer.
Sonic, which has plumbed classic Americana with high-tech drive-ins and magical ice slushies, recently shared a Facebook post so perfectly attuned to the reading-list blues that it’s likely to give you an ice cream headache: Give the brand the title of a book you were supposed to have read, and it will give you a 10-word recap.
The brand’s Facebook fans wasted little time flooding the page with hundreds of comments asking for summaries of books from “The Giver” to “A Clockwork Orange,” “1984” and, yes, “50 Shades of Grey.” The results won’t earn students an A on a book report, but they’re sly and reward the more dialed-in reader. Kudos to a brand for not playing it dumb.
Here are some of the better ones:
Great Expectations
“Expections =/= reality. Sometimes that’s great, sometimes it’s not. London.”
Hamlet
“Wants revenge for his father’s death, goes a little overboard.”
The Giver
“Jonas turns 12, discovers there’s more to life than safety.”
A Clockwork Orange
“Futuristic totalitarian society. Violence, violence, violence.”
Dracula
“If you think someone’s a vampire, don’t secondguess. Just run.”
Lord of the Flies
“Buncha kids + island. Not as fun as it sounds.”
To Kill a Mockingbird
“People are only scared of what they don’t understand.”
Metamorphosis
“Man turns into bug, becomes big burden to family.”
50 Shades of Grey
“Nice try. There’s no way you’re reading that for school.”
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