Kraft’s chief exec Irene Rosenfeld told analysts yesterday that “Given the complexion of the market and the global landscape, we believe it would be difficult for [Cadbury] to go it alone”. These two cats from the Wall Street Journal are saying the deal is definitely going to happen, in a vaguely homoerotic, suppressed bromance manner as they can’t seem to stop pawing at each other. And investors seem to think it’s going to happen too, sending Cadbury shares soaring yesterday. No doubt Hershey’s, Nestle, Kellogg and Pepsi, who have all also been linked with a deal, are indeed troubled by the idea of Kraft getting their hands on Cadbury’s, but whether Cadbury’s is just indulging them in order to drive the actual Kraft deal higher is another matter.

So with it looking like just a matter of “how much” rather than “if”, one analyst told Bloomberg, “We’re moving towards the end game of consolidation in confectionery” – in other words, the world is going to have just two or three companies worldwide making almost all of our teeth-rotting treats. It’s exhumed the old debate about homegrown British manufacturing, as another company looks set to sit alongside such Americanisms as processed cheese and Oreos – “it is really about what Britain should do for a living. If so many people are to survive on this small island we must do more than hawk shares”, says Carl Mortished in today’s Times. All the interviews with Bournville pensioners and sighing over purple foil suggest a certain amount of pointless sentimentality surrounding the opposition to this deal, but Mortished’s point is a good one – we’re giving up and cashing in before the race to new markets (India, Brazil etc) has even properly begun. Rosenfeld’s “submit, puny Brits” comments yesterday should be seen more as symptomatic of her steamrollering ambition, rather than any real forecast of Cadbury’s ability to survive in an ameliorating recession; Kraft make disgusting, oozing foods that only Americans will eat, while Cadbury’s make delicious chocolate that the whole world now seemingly loves.

But hawk shares we will, and the deal is a fillip for a City that has been twiddling its thumbs M&A-wise this year – Goldman Sachs, UBS, and Morgan Stanley are set to receive £100m in fees for putting the deal through, while Bloomberg reports today that Kraft are in talks to bag $8bn in financing via a bridge loan from Deutsche Bank and Citigroup.

So the deal looks like hoisting another American corporation onto the world stage at the expense of British expansion, with a bunch of non-British banks (with admittedly lots of British employees) coining it as the deal goes through. Sigh. Well, just as long as Kraft don’t shut down Cadbury World – as any child who grew up in Birmingham will tell you, it’s a museum where chocolate is fed to you in bar form at regular intervals throughout your trip, culminating in a frenzy of sugar-rushing school parties deliriously spending their pocket money on tat in the gift shop. There are cars shaped like Creme Eggs. If you ever want to create a high-margin business that embeds a semi-religious brand empathy in consumers from a very young age, build a museum in a chocolate factory.

In my mind when I first heard about this I saw a full-page, flexible screen with flashes pointlessly shimmering down it a la any Philip K Dick story adapted by Hollywood. The reality is a tiny wee screen housed in some cardboard pages that’s sure to annoyingly interrupt your enjoyment of all the beautiful people.

Lamer yet is when you find out that this is costing CBS thousands and thousands of dollars, and is only getting put in mags for subscribers in LA and NYC. Not sure how the numbers got crunched here, and the channel is keeping quiet on budgets, but I think it was conceived in their “cool stuff that makes it look like we’re really innovative, no matter how unsustainable the cost” department. Admittedly the traction is getting increased by people like us talking about it, but the reality is that this campaign just isn’t going to reach enough people to justify its cost. With ad margins getting smaller mid-recession, this kind of showboating seems like a dangerous course to take.

If you do expensive, limited experiments, do them like Fallon recently did with their Make Me A Supermodel campaign. By creating an interactive shop window, they wrung every bit of engagement from and exposure to its audience, which was constantly refreshing itself on the pavement in front. By contrast, CBS’s video screens have much less reach, and will look very average once the battery runs out. They also have to be inserted by hand, which makes the whole thing take on a distinctly pre-Cambrian tone.  

But perhaps the most annoying aspect of this whole thing is the stuff its actually advertising, the toxically unfunny “comedies” How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Two And A Half Men, and new show Accidentally On Purpose, whose title alone makes it sound like it’s straight out of a two-minute brainstorm in 1986. These are shows which can only be enjoyed when off work with swine flu, when ER seems like Len Loach and when you need a show with an extra-loud laugh track to flag the jokes up for your tired, monged-out brain. If this is the future, then its sitcoms still suck.