Report On Fastest Growing Brands For 2022 Might Be Bullshit But Here’s A ‘Great Value’ Cream Cheese-Themed Mitsubishi Mirage Anyway

You know what’s stupid? Brands. Brands are stupid. I know we all have our favorites or whatever, and that’s fine, but as a whole? As a cultural influence? Sure, they have plenty of power over what we do and think and encounter on a daily basis, but deep down? It’s all pretty ridiculous. And this is never more apparent than when the end of the year rolls around and those companies that do vague shit with and for brands for big money start telling us all what brands have been doing the most or growing the most or whatever. Some of those lists of brands have been coming out now, and there’s no car brands on there at all. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be opportunities for a clever carmaker!

[Editor’s Note: Just a warning: This blog is a bit unhinged. Jason sometimes gets this way, and I’m not about to try to stop him; last time I did, my 401K savings somehow halved. Still unsure how that happened. -DT]

Here, you can see the report on the Fastest Growing Brands for 2022 from some outfit called Morning Consult, which I guess is respected in the industry blah bah whatever. Here’s the report, if you want to read it, which you don’t. Want to know the fastest growing brands of this year, according to whoever these guys are? Here you go!

Hey, I bet you’re thinking, what the fuck is this? Great question! Meta is the biggest growing brand? Meta? Who gives a shit about Meta? It’s Facebook, okay, that’s huge, but Meta as a brand? Are people talking about that? Why?

I use Adobe products daily, but I do not give a shit about them as a brand. Do I? Maybe. I don’t know. Chobani? Office Depot? Nobody is into Office Depot or that yogurt, are they? What does all this even mean?

I’m gonna grab my fifth Four Loko and really consider the impact these brands have on my life. Crocs? Google fucking Sheets? That’s a brand? Milwaukee makes good tools, okay. And I’ve enjoyed my time with Doritos, so thank you Frito Lay.

What the fuck is Celsius?

I think the real standout here, though, is Great Value Cream Cheese, the Walmart store brand of cream cheese. It’s to Kirkland Cream Cheese what Kirkland is to Philadelphia Cream Cheese. I’m sure I’ve had it before, which is why I can say it’s the cream cheese of people who know their worth, and it’s not a lot, if we’re honest. It pairs well with a plastic butter knife that will snap in twain at the point where there’s a fake ridge where a blade would meet a handle were it not one piece of molded plastic, and a rubbery bagel you stole (I saw you).

This is one of 2022’s fastest growing brands. Because everyone you know has Great Value Cream Cheese mania, and that’s what they want to talk to you about, all the fucking time. Great Value Cream Cheese! It’s what I’m into now, ha ha, I know, right? Oh, the blue paintbrush swoosh on my shirt? You know what that’s from, right? Yes! Great Value Cream Cheese! Up high, my man, I knew you’d know what’s up!

See, I’m thinking a struggling carmaker needs to fucking leap on the Great Value Cream Cheese bandwagon and get in on this hotness while its piping fucking hot! Like, say, Mitsubishi! Imagine the possibilities of a Great Value Cream Cheese Edition Mirage!

Think about it! Mitsubishi could take their already great value Mirage and pair it with the Greatest Value, Great Value Cream Cheese, giving the Mirage a kicky stripe kit reminiscent of the recognizable-anywhere blue paint swoosh, and put the whole exciting Great Value Cream Cheese logo, which inside Walmart sources told me took nearly 35 minutes to design, right there on the door!

They could also pack the glove box full of Great Value Cream Cheese! This thing will sell itself! The only problem will be for owners to figure out how to keep the hordes of horny, excited people of every type from swarming the car, delirious with hot, humid Great Value Cream Cheese mania, eager to just be some part of the glory of Great Value Cream Cheese, especially in Mitsubishi Mirage form.

Are you curious about the methodology Morning Consult used to find these amazing results? Me neither! But here it is, anyway:

Morning Consult’s Fastest Growing Brands rankings are determined by measuring growth in the share of consumers who say they would consider purchasing from a brand over the course of the year. Morning Consult Brand Intelligence tracks consumer perceptions on thousands of brands on a daily basis, forming the foundation of this report.

Growth was determined by taking the share of consumers who said they were considering purchasing from the brand from Oct. 1-31, 2022, and subtracting the share who said the same from Jan. 1-31, 2022. The Fastest Growing Brands 2022 analysis was conducted among 1,689 brands. Sample sizes ranged from 200 to 27,398 responses collected among U.S. adults, with respective margins of error ranging from 1 to 6 percentage points.

Morning Consult began tracking several brands for the first time in 2022, and many were added midway through months, resulting in smaller sample sizes in the first month of tracking. In calculating the change, we removed data for the first month of tracking if that month had less than two-thirds of the average sample size for the other months.

In making lists specific to demographics, we removed any brand that had a sample size of less than 200 for any demographic group. MTN DEW RISE ENERGY was removed from the analysis since its brand name in MCBI changed from “MTD DEW RISE ENERGY” to “MTN DEW ENERGY” in April 2022, resulting in a 20-point increase in awareness (from 52% aware to 72% aware between the weeks of April 11 and April 25, 2022).

So, you know, bullshit. Great!

It looks like Autozone made the list for Gen X at number seven, and WD-40 made the Millennial list at number six, and that’s about as automotive as these lists get.

Oh this is all so stupid. Why did I write this? Oh, I remembered: because I have Great Value Cream Cheese mania, and we’d be absolute fools not to jump on it, stat. America wants more more more Great Value Cream Cheese, and there’s no reason an alert carmaker can’t turn this into cold, wet cash!

Mitsubishi, just leave my check by that urinal we both know. Shove it between the big pipe and the wall. Thank you.

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