Money can’t buy you love…. but it could buy Mark Zuckerberg a book stand
On Thursday (October 28), we were treated to the news that Facebook would be rebranding as Meta.
In a video, Mark Zuckerberg explained to us how we would soon all spend our time living in a technological, virtual universe, interacting with trippy avatars where the only touch we feel is the rigid plastic of a VR headset around our eyes and the only emotion we experience is the buzz of someone ‘love’ reacting to our latest Metaverse upload.
However along with this dystopian glimpse into the future, people couldn’t help noticing something else in the video.
In Zuckerberg’s luxurious billionaire house, he uses a bottle of BBQ sauce as a book stand.
I'm really confused as to why Mark Zuckerberg has a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce on the shelf in his living room pic.twitter.com/JUJdBZdK0Y
— WOLF (@WOLF_Financial) October 28, 2021
Some soon identified the specific brand and bottle, recognising it as a Sweet Baby Ray’s bottle.
Mark Zuckerberg using a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's bbq sauce as a bookend, totally normal human behavior pic.twitter.com/tnT3wjQeJe
— 🫡 Minoru-kun🫶 (@Minoru79) October 28, 2021
Others suggested that the bottle of sauce was an attempt by Zuckerberg to convince us all that he is in fact human.
https://twitter.com/wickedshrapnel/status/1453828013628563457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1453828013628563457%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ladbible.com%2Fnews%2Flatest-people-spot-bottle-of-bbq-sauce-as-a-bookstand-in-mark-zuckerberg-clip-20211029
Zuck is just like us! Sauce on the living room shelf pic.twitter.com/nq0QdWISzN
— Anthony Miale (@anferno) October 28, 2021
https://twitter.com/AubryAndrews/status/1453817164285284363?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1453817164285284363%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ladbible.com%2Fnews%2Flatest-people-spot-bottle-of-bbq-sauce-as-a-bookstand-in-mark-zuckerberg-clip-20211029
It’s a sweet bit of advertising for the folk at Sweet Baby Ray’s though. According to Apex Marketing, the placement of the bottle in the video was worth around $1.8 million to the company.
Even without the logo showing, the Sweet Baby Rays bottle used as a book holder in the first two minutes of Mark Zuckerberg’s video stream today, and the conversation around it, was worth $1.8 million to the BBQ sauce brand from social media and TV, according to @ApexMarketing. https://t.co/x2CERytcUr
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) October 28, 2021
Alongside spotting the sauce bottle, the other big news from the announcement was that the overall Facebook organisation would be changing its name to Meta.
Explaining the decision to rebrand, Zuckerberg said: “We are a company that builds technology to connect. Together, we can finally put people at the centre of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”
The company’s social media platforms of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp will not be rebranding though and will keep their current names.
Related links:
- Facebook—sorry, Meta, unveils its new logo
- Facebook has officially changed its name to Meta
- The Prime Minister says we’ve entered a period of optimism – but for who?