sure, you laughed at my muffin then. . . .

I will start off by acknowledging that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, yes, yes, and will also acknowledge that someone has to actually know it was your idea first to “flatter” you, but, that said, GAWKER TOTALLY STOLE MY MUFFIN TEST!

Backstory: Ten years ago (shit, ten years. . . ), when I first started in consulting, I was very amused by a discussion technique called “personification.” This is where you try to get at intangibles by talking about tangibles; try to get at ethereal qualities by talking about concrete things. “What kind of a brand is it?” Hard to answer. “If this brand were a person, what kind of car would he/she drive?” A little easier.

Anyway, I now understand how useful an exercise this is, but when I started, I was a little embarrassed, maybe, to play this game. As a sort of cynical take on personification, I came up with the “muffin test.” Instead of asking what kind of “person” is this brand, I’d ask, “What kind of muffin would it be?” Blueberry? Corn? Bran? Gourmet and fresh-baked or artificial and shrink-wrapped? You get the idea. I also started doing it with people. (You’d be surprised how well this works.)

Well, that was, as I say, ten years ago. Cut to: tonight. I’m looking at Gawker’s takedown of New York Mag’s pump-up of Ralph Lauren Jeans designer Ai Ly, and I see that Gawk’s “panelists” are asked, “What kind of muffin is Ai? Because she is not a ragamuffin.”

I did a little mental jumping up and down (then just decided to blog about it) because, sure, I’d like a little credit where credit is due, but mostly, I just wish I still worked with the folks who laughed at me ten years ago so I could throw down a copy of NYM and say, “take that, you day-old, store-bought, made-from-a-box-mix, don’t-really-have-any-dietary-fiber-in-you-but-still-taste-just-as-bad bran muffin, you!”