Writing, marketing and technology
This advert, for a sale at a clothes retailer called Fat Face, annoyed me.
The spin is just too blatant. It says Everything Half Price* and then the small print reads ‘Sale items only’. So everything isn’t half price.
What they hope is that readers will be too stupid to see through it. I don’t want to shop at a company that thinks I’m stupid.
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I wouldn’t want to shop at a store called Fat Face!!!
I’ve never heard of them before.
The tag is curious. In having a quick look around, of dozens of items I saw, only one wasn’t (a water bottle). In fact, many were less than 1/2 price (e.g. 8.5/2 was rounded down to 4).
This ad appears much more honest than the frequent “up to 1/2 off” were 3 items are 1/2 off and other sale items are 10-20% off.
That’s pretty funny! I ran across a similar sign that I posted in one of my blogs earlier this year. Ironically, Parisian got bought out recently and the store here in town closed (the picture is of one where my in-laws live in a different state, but they may have closed as well). During their store-closing clearance, the prices were still higher than a lot of their regular sale prices! (So my wife tells me.)
this is a very common ploy, advertisers employ in most promotional or sales ads.
i’m pissed off with this kind low and cheap “scam”.
Right, people don’t want to shop at a company that thinks they are stupid. They want to shop at a company that thinks they are intelligent. So I need to let them know I think they are clever. How to let them know? That is a real question. Any tip is welcome.
er? I saw it as ironic, I seem to remember fat face running other tongue in cheek ads before.
My well developed cynicism would lead me to conclude that if it was real small print it’s be really really small print and not adjacent to the main strapline… no? looks like it may have backfired on them in any case, possibly to tight a focus group.
actually the full graphic ( see http://www.fatface.com/page/home ) features the word sale prominently and repeatedly on balance I can’t see that they are trying to obscure the fact that this applies to sale items only.
Maybe the unconscious editing of the ad here is inadvertant spin as well Matt?
To be honest I think they’re merely protecting themselves from an increasingly litigous and pedantic society.
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