Wedginald - A Mouldy Reality Show
In one of the more successful viral campaigns, more than 1.5 million people have logged onto Cheddarvision.tv to watch a 44lb handmade cheddar cheese from Shepton Mallet slowly mature over the past 11 months. The cheese, christened Wedginald, boasts of its own MySpace, Facebook and YouTube pages, a romantic Valentine in the mail, had poems and songs written about it, been invited to a wedding, received an anonymous gift of chocolate and decorative chicks at Easter - and all for molding online.
It is amazing how while at one end, reports show that the attention span of the online population is going down, at the other end, a site where practically nothing is happening apart from a counter which measures the time that the cheese has been maturing. It beats all things that are reputed to work online - interactivity, engagment, etc. I mean, just how engaging can a moulding cheese be?
The site set up by the West Country Farmhouse Cheddar, an association of cheesemakers in Somerset, was started with the intention of engaging people who might not otherwise have bothered to engage with cheesemaking. Given that Britons reportedly consume 360000 tonnes of Cheddar every year, I guess they deserve to know where the cheese comes from.
A nine-month taste test described it as having “a caramel nose, a sweet twiggy greenness and a creamy good length of flavour”, not to mention a wonder is reckoned to be an outstanding example of dairy brilliance. While I can’t vouch for the “dairy brilliance”, it sure showed that the next big thing online can be anything - even nothing.
Now however, Wedginald is coming up for auction with the proceeds going to BBC Children in Need. The last date is Nov 19, so if you want this cheese swing over to CheddarVision.tv - last I visited, the bid was at £520.
Filed under: Digital culture, Ideas & Innovations, Website Alert