In CBS's FBI-math-genius-show Numbers, the aforementioned genius Charlie Eppes criticizes someone by saying, “Who spiked your Kool-Aid?” In a Law and Order episode, a defendant describes the moment when his friend became a religious zealot with the phrase, “That’s when he drank the Kool-Aid.” On Fox News, bellowing media whipping-boy Bill O'Reilly uses a graphic of the perpetually sweaty Kool-Aid Man himself with a line drawn through him to illustrate when an e-mailer has zoomed off into thought-control lock-step. Former Rolling Stone writer and current media rent-a-pundit Touré even has a new book entitled I Never Drank the Kool-Aid.

“Drinking the Kool-Aid” has become a common phrase to describe anyone who blindly buys into a system, religious or otherwise. Even Wal-Mart, Amway and Mary Kay Cosmetics have been accused of having armies of Kool-Aid swilling followers shambing through their board rooms like extras in a George Romero film.

It all started in the hippie hangover of the 1970s, when a failed monkey salesman named Jim Jones founded his own private cult, The People’s Temple. He even managed to lead the Temple’s 1,100 members to Guyana to create their own village on 300 acres of government land. In November, 1978, about to be exposed for the fraud that he was, Jones persuaded 900 People’s Temple members, men, women and poor, helpless children, to die by drinking cyanide-laced grape Kool-Aid.

Here's the problem: it wasn’t Kool-Aid.

It was actually FlavorAid, a similarly named South American Kool-Aid competitor, something I’m sure gives Kool-Aid’s marketing people the willies (that’s the technical term) every time they’re reminded of it. But then again, maybe they’re just happy to have anyone talking about Kool-Aid when Red Bull is around.

Advertising and marketing people are always using the phrase “Top of Mind” to describe that perfect consumer-hypnosis condition in which people think of your product first above all others in a given category. What’s the Most Prestigious University in America? Harvard. What’s the World’s Favorite Table Salt? Morton’s. Online books? Amazon. Richest Man? Bill Gates? Who has the World’s Worst Haircut despite being the World’s Richest Man? You get the idea.

Whan a product is failing, or embroiled in a scandal, being “Top of Mind” can be a lead weight around the stockholder’s necks. It’s especially acute when the company is named after a real person, like a Martha Stewart, Donald Trump or Walt Disney, the success rises and falls on their shoulders.

Remember a 1950s-era diet candy called Ayds? When the HIV-AIDS epidemic was headline news, a reporter supposedly asked the president of the candy company if they were going to change their name. He infamously replied, “We've had this name for decades -- let them change their disease!” The company took the Big Dirt Nap not long after.

Kool-Aid, FlavorAid -- by now it doesn’t make a difference to the average person. Kool-Aid is all they’ll remember.

There’s a lot more to “raising awareness” than getting your name on Google Alerts. As a matter of fact, awareness all by by itself may sometimes be more of a curse than a blessing. Just ask Enron. Or Worldcom. Or O.J. Simpson.