Hello Kitty MBA Hell

I get all kinds of strange emails linking Hello Kitty with anything you can dream of. You know that the world is nearing the end when MBA students are getting college credit for studying Hello Kitty. You know that I’m in the middle of the Hello Kitty Hell tsunami when those students write to me for help with their project:

We are a group of first year full time MBA students in UC Irvine doing a big marketing project on Hello Kitty and we really need a big favor from you – if possible, to complete this 5 min survey and also to post this survey on your blog or ask your friends to help out as well. We need data that can exclude demographic limitations so we need people from all over the world to do this and we are looking for more than 2000 participants. Please use your charm and also your passion for kitty to help us on this survey!

Obviously these students need to do a bit more research if they believe that I have a “passion for kitty” or that I would ever place my friends into such a tortuous position in the guise of helping (although it seems to be a pretty good project for my enemies). Maybe they should get a failing grade before they even start and save everyone the pain of having to learn anything new about Hello Kitty.

Of course, my wife thinks it’s a wonderful idea and is of the opinion that college would be a much better place if all people had to study about Hello Kitty as part of their graduation requirement. Hello Kitty University – there’s something to look forward to that you know the people at Sanrio are probably all going to be saying, “why didn’t we think of that before?” at their next meeting.

Something tells me these students have already lined up plum job positions at the corporate headquarters of the evil feline or are trying to weasel their way in by kissing some you know what. Seriously, if you were a student and could pick any marketing theme project to conduct, why on earth would you pick Hello Kitty? Or an even better question, why the hell would you think it was a good idea to ask me to help you with it?