#carbonaragate: Marketing fail, or brilliant troll?

Europeans are very entertaining sometimes.

Last month, French lifestyle site demotivateur posted a video recipe for a pasta "alla Carbonara" that was nothing like the eggy spaghetti dish beloved by Italians.

Even among Italians, there are variations in the recipe, which is a "tradition" less than a century old. However, the French version almost seemed like a parody of French food by Italians. Dry pasta, bacon, and onions are simmered in water, then the mix is tossed in crème fraîche and cheese and pepper sprinkled on. Finally, a raw egg yolk is cracked on top. What?

The video went viral in Italy, according to Huffington Post, with Italians loudly bemoaning the "death of carbonara."

But let's look at that video again.

Nice product placement, eh? When I first saw the original video (now gone) I swear I saw Barilla branding at the end as well. I suspect, as some Italian commenters do, that this was just a piece of content marketing gone awry.

And yet the company denied everything on the Sai cosa mangi? Facebook Page, and offered a link to alternative recipes on their own site.

So, either this was rogue content marketing by Barilla's French team that went very badly, or it was a brilliant trolling of Italians. Either way, Barilla is benefiting from clicks, mentions, and visits by outraged Italians and curious foreigners.

Hmmm...

After Barilla, pro-gay pasta parody ads are cropping up all over the place

After anti-gay comments by Barilla's Chairman set the internet on fire this week with talk of a global boycott, smart pasta brands have been taking shots at their biggest competitor:

This one is my favourite, but unfortunately it's not real, according to Garofalo's Facebook page. They point out that the neopolitan dialect in the headline is incorrect.

The subhead is in standard Italian. It roughly translates as "We don't care who you do it with, as long as you do (make) it al dente!". However, an Italian friend tells me that "tost" makes it more crude, essentially saying, "We don't care who you do it with, as long as you do it hard!"

Despite distancing themselves from the parody ad, Garofalo wrote, "The only families that are not Garofalo are those who do not like good pasta".

This one's "real". It's from Buitoni's USA Facebook page

.
And this is from Bertolli, on their German Facebook page.

Canada's Italpasta also got in on the action.