Prego Has a Dinner-Conversation-Recording Device, Capisce?
Prego, the pasta sauce company, is getting into hardware with a device that sits on your table and records dinner conversations. No, this isn’t April Fools’. The Connection Keeper is a round puck that houses two microphones for recording around the table. The recorder was developed in partnership with StoryCorps, the 20-year-old nonprofit that has recorded conversations with more than 720,000 people about their lives. The Connection Keeper is more of a publicity stunt than a readily available product. Fewer than 100 will be made. The pucks look more like a tuna can than what you’d associate with the pasta sauce brand—small and meant to be tucked aside so as not to attract attention. The whole goal here, Prego and StoryCorps say, is to advocate for keeping people off their phones during dinner. “Everything now is AI, and everyone has their phones on the table,” says Elyce Henkin, a managing director of StoryCorps studios and brand partnerships. “It interrupts the conversation and the flow. We wanted to get rid of that and go back to …
