Sleepin' Forzanis

Sportchek – a business going sideways, fast.

A close friend was talking about getting some new shoes lately, and that made me think back on Sportchek, a business that used to be private, but that is now part of a public, shareholder-driven conglomerate, Forzani Group.  You may know Sportchek as the king of inflated pricing.  For what seems like decades now, Sportchek has used what, in the 70s, must have been a canny ploy—you put up a pair of shoes, say the regular price is $400, then say the sale price is $250—on virtually every item, and then maybe add a little bit more, like, “Ok, we say these shoes cost $400; we’ll sell them for $250, but this week only, you can have them for $180.”  It’s baffling to imagine when or for how long this ploy worked, but still it’s the one Sportchek clings to.

Further, for what does indeed seem like decades, Sportchek has had one special, and one special only, for what surely seems like 365 days a year: “buy one get one ½ price.”  Who, thinking s/he needs a pair of shoes, instantly thinks: "oh, yeah, I better get 2 pair"?  ??  Well, admittedly, I do live in an extremely rich jurisdiction (though not all Sportchek stores are in or near extremely rich jurisdictions), and clearly Sportchek figures, "hey, these people are rich, they'll buy all kinds of stuff they don't need."  Also, there are rich young families, and Sportchek is obviously counting on this, though what dork or responsible parent would be impressed by the inflated pricing in the first place is beyond me.  Obviously, this eternal “special” puts the lie completely to their phony pricing, and makes you know everything they advertise is a joke, but Sportchek ain’t all that swift on the uptake.  And, clearly, they don’t have to be.  They’ve known their ups and downs, but shareholders strangely stick with them, despite their modest achievements (it's the monopoly thing, for sure).  It’d be a strange thing to sit in on one of those Forzani Group (who own Sportchek and their similars) board meetings—a band of brothers so bloated on meatballs their snoozing snoring guts must rock the mahogany table back and forth until one of them snorts to life and says, “ok, this is over, let’s get outta here”  It’s a wonder shareholders put up with it.

Rather than transparent pricing, actually having stock on hand (shoes, shorts—forget it—virtually every Sportchek employee has it drilled into their heads to say “you should try the bigger location.”  Not, “we can call and see if another location has it,” but “_you_ should try to find another location”).  Genius marketing, and again, good enough for the fatboys on the board and their skinnier shareholders.

Sportchek has always of course relied on highschool labour, kids who work part-time for a few months.  You don’t expect them to know anything, and they don’t.  (Recently, I was in an always empty store in a dismal mall I visit once every 3 years, and I was standing there with a rep., and an Asian woman came in looking for birdies—shuttlecocks—and a girl and a boi just looked at her like she was a complete alien until *I*, the customer, finally had to help her out.)  You can’t blame the kids for not knowing anything—why should they?  They’re not getting paid and they’ll only be there for a few weeks, anyway, so who cares?  But what Sportchek really has amped up—and apparently shareholders love it—is the fake customer service end.  What this means is that, say you want to buy a pair of shoes.  It says $299 for $199, but this week $149 (70s marketing).  You get the kid to get you a box of shoes (there's never much staff, so this could take some time).  He brings them.  He hands them to you.  He says: “did I hand you that box of shoes ok?”  You try on your shoes.  He says: “did I watch you try on your shoes enough?”  You don’t buy the shoes, but you look at some socks for your girlfriend (inevitably, buy one get one ½ price).  You go for those.  He says: “please tell them Darren sold these to you.”  You get to the till.  The girl says: “did you get really great service?”  It is just beyond belief cartoonish.  Leave me alone. Rather than do business like professionals, the Forzani Group just wants to coast as fatboys on a 70s wave they never have to get off, and shareholders seem incomprehensibly impressed by how minimum wage highschool kids are made to ask if people are happy.

(No airmiles anymore, either.  Hardly a gamebreaker for me, but a bit of an incentive.  Sportchek isn't on the program anymore, so one slight reason less even to go in to the store and be told that the "NEW STOCK" they're hyping isn't really in that store and you should go somewhere else, etc.)

Business lesson #1:  Be lazy.  Very lazy.  Never think.

Can’t Get a Decent Sandwich? Blame Subway’s Advertising Budget

Man am I getting sick of saturation Subway advertising.  There is no nook or cranny they can’t squeeze themselves into.  Canadian radio, American radio, TV, shows on my computer, you name it.  One ad trumpets how healthy they are, the next shows you a new cholesterol bomb they’re pushing.  That bloody annoying monkey.

What always has blown my mind about Subway is the truly stratospheric and stunning prices they charge for. . .a sandwich.  Why do they charge such prices?  Well, duh, look at the advertising budget.  I can’t believe anyone would pay $10 for a sandwich, but, well, obviously people do.  What is it that people in general find so hard about making a sandwich?  Let me give that a couple more ??.  People who eat at Subway are just driving up prices for anyone else who wants to eat.  It’s irresponsible consumerism.  Dorks who are willing to pay $3 for a Coke, when they could just go to a grocery store and buy a 12-pack for that price, put pressure on everyone else and hurt everyday people struggling to get by.  We all know how expensive staples like bread are getting, and sure I know about grain shortages and prices and so on, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the prices charged by a massive advertising conglomerate like Subway weren’t having a knock-on effect on the upwardly spiraling price of bread.  A lot happens, from field to store, to a kernel of wheat, but if you know that someone is going to pay 10 bucks for. . .a sandwich. . .at the end of the line, well, there’s gotta be room for lots of people to take profit along the way.

Now, of course I can’t cite actual prices for Subway, because, duh, they’d never publish them online.  If people knew how much they were going to have to pay for a sandwich, they’d be stunned.  I could make sandwiches for a scout troop for the cost of one Subway sandwich.  I suppose Subway would say, oh, well, we sell billions of sandwiches all over the world (and our prices are always trending up), so we could never offer a stable price quote beyond a very local area.  –but still, think about it:  what kind of business makes a specific practice of never revealing its prices online?  How does a producer sell a product if the producer won’t tell the consumer the price?  Just bizarre.

Obviously, I have had Subway sandwiches.  It’s been years, but definitely I have had them.  I remember a dismal little narrow Subway shop I went to in Toronto a few times.  It was situated next to two thriving pizza slice operations that I usually frequented.  Subway did have some seating upstairs, though (the store really was shaped and laid out just like a truncated Subway car, or a half Subway sandwich).  I’d usually use a coupon or something so I could get two sandwiches and have food for later on (I must say, though, that Subway sandwiches just do not travel well—put one in the fridge for a couple hours, and it sure doesn’t come out like a sandwich you’d made yourself—odd).  The Subway restaurant was a good place to go if you wanted total peace and quiet to maybe read or do some work on the upper level—you’d sure never encounter any other patrons, and you definitely didn’t have to wait, like you did at the pizza places.  I remember one day I read a certificate on the wall there, and it actually said that that franchise had received an award for being the most popular in Canada.  Well, that was another stunner.  I don’t know if I ever saw another customer in the tiny, dull place, but apparently it was #1 in sales.  Go figure.  Maybe everyone who gets a Subway franchise gets one of those certificates.  Who knows. What I figured was, I guess, was that because it was so comparatively outrageously expensive, no-one went to Subway.

And I suppose I hoped that was the case, and that the Subway blight that has become so universal would be removed from the landscape.  You see, I had bought sandwiches before, from the venerable Canadian Mr. Sub chain.  When a competitor in Subway appeared, I was intrigued and willing to give it a go, but the prices were so stunningly sky-high (gotta pay for that advertising) that it was a relationship that could not last.  And it broke my relationship with Mr. Sub.  What with Subway charging astronomical prices for. . .a sandwich. . .Mr. Sub got hip to that trip pretty quickly; they added a couple ingredients and just about doubled their prices and that was that.  If I went to a Mr. Sub today, I could get my sandwich on about 15 different breads (which, curiously, all taste the same anyway), but the money I’d have to pay would leave a bad taste in my mouth—so it’s probably been years since I went to Mr. Sub, either, and I did at one time like to hoover a regular assorted fairly frequently.  And with Subway boldly showing the way, through advertising to drive up the price of their products, other $10 sandwich chains, like Quizno’s, have been popping up like bedbugs.

Speaking of bread, there’s also the sheer stench of Subway restaurants.  I don’t know how they do it.  If you walk down an alley near one, or park near one, or go to a convenience store they’re attached to, you are assaulted by that peculiar and gross odor that emanates from Subway restaurant locations.  There’s a convenience store near me that I’ll go extra blocks to avoid just so I don’t have to face the horrible smell when I go into it.  I really don’t know how Subway gets that smell.  It’s as if somebody took some loaves of bread and threw them in a well used public pool and then rescued them and put them in a towel and kept them under heat lamps for hours on end.  Subway has always liked to tout its bread, but, well, if you’ve ever made bread yourself, you surely sure as hell do know that it does NOT smell like that.

Well, it’s all too bad.  Once upon a time, a person could get a decent sandwich just about anywhere for a price commensurate with what actually goes into the preparation and sale of a sandwich.  But Subway has helped to wreck that option, and they’re making sure you know, using every conceivable marketing platform available.  So the next time you feel cool for spending $10 on a sandwich you could make yourself for a fraction of the cost, just remember, you’re not just buying a sandwich, you’re buying ad space.

Rogers, Nissan Lead in Christmas Crassness Sweepstakes

Oh, I like Christmas.  I’m lucky to live in a place where there’s often snow at Christmas, and I like the lights, the crowds, and so on.  Sure, the commercialism is soul-destroying, but for anyone with a long historical perspective, one knows that it was ever thus.  I see no point in fighting it.  I remember being a kid and wanting the newest toys.  What can you do?

Still though, this Christmas I notice a peculiar phenomenon, led by major marketers like the above-mentioned Nissan and Rogers.  Rogers has arguably been doing it for a few years.  What they are specifically doing is running ads saying “hey, buy something for yourself.”  Everywhere I go these days, marketers are saying: “buy a present for yourself.”

This does bespeak a new level of crassness.  Once upon a time, marketers did try to sell the old-timey peace-on-earth goodwill-to-all things as they got their ads going in November.  But now just about every ad seems to be NOT about buying something for someone else, but about buying for YOU.

Why?

Well, our selfishness and disconnectedness from others, even as we stare ever more deeply into our electronic devices—that’s obvious.

Or could it be something else.  Like most people, I used to shop at stores.  Now, as time goes by, I shop increasingly online.  When I used to go out to stores at Christmas, it was a weird, heady, different experience, and try as I might, I inevitably found things to buy for myself.  Now that I shop online, it’s much more targeted, with only the people I want to buy for imagined.  Oh, sure, the online marketers constantly try to make you buy for yourself, but maybe I’m just old or things have changed or whatever, but actually that doesn’t have much effect on me.  I tend to be a much more efficient shopper now, in the online world.  I know what I want for others, and I go out in search of it and buy it; there is little collateral commercial damage involving me.  Do TV and radio, and, I guess, online, marketers grasp this, and are they recalibrating to tell us to get gifts for ourselves accordingly?  I wonder.

Hey, I’m not anti-Christmas commercialism.  It just is what it is and has been for about 150 years.  But these new ads—everywhere—targeted almost exclusively at getting people to buy things for themselves—that *is* a new development. 

Well, Nissan and Rogers have really lost me.  They say in advertising, as in all other things, that all bad press is better than no press.  Fine.  But you can make a decision.  For example, my family pretty much only ever used Michelin tires.  They always did make good tires.  But then they came out with their ad campaign with babies in tires, suggesting that failure to buy Michelin meant that you were trying to kill your kids.  Well, bingo dingo, that was it.  Whereas I would have been the first person to buy Michelins for life, I now never will.  I’ve been buying tires for decades now, and whereas I would have bought many Michelin sets by now, I never have, and I never will.  I’m willing to pay more for inferior tires, just to not have Michelin.  So sometimes bad press is bad press.

Nissan, Rogers, all those other companies advocating buying for yourself above all before others, well.  I’m sure they’ll do fine as time goes by; Michelin sheds no tears over my non-patronage, I’m sure.  But I wonder.  I wonder if enough people just said: “Christ, this is enough.  This really is enough.”

Well, happy buying, anyway.  Yeah, buy something for yourself.  But if you really get more of a charge out of buying something for yourself than buying something for someone else, then maybe buy yourself a gun and put us all out of your selfish misery.

Update: November 2014: The Source is advocating that you buy for yourself first and has spent countless thousands on updating the Canadian Tire scrooge motif.

zr

Old Navy – Flare Jeans – Curse of All Women, and People

I sure do take on the big topics.  But anyone and I, too, naturally like to talk about advertising, and I imagine I’ll keep on doing so.  And I don’t think my focus here is so minor; it blends my tastes and attitudes with social and gender ones that are far from insignificant.

Old Navy has this new TV ad based on a Debbie Gibson song, featuring four young women bowling.  The song goes:

Old Navy Flares make my legs lean (long and lean),

Go out and take a second glance:
They fit so right, it can’t be wrong,

I’m never taking off these pants.

The ad features three young women coming into a bowling alley, followed by a tokenish pre-teen/tween Asianish girl.  The hot girls throw a few balls (comical stereotype Vinnies pratfall and look on—if you stereotype the guys, then it’s ok to stereotype the girls, is the advertising shorthand of our generation) and then the token gets to dance in front of them.

I guess this ad must have been planned to work on various levels—back to school, telling girls they look lean, junior Asian reps getting to style too, etc (they aren’t selling “junk in the trunk” jeans here, anyway, that’s for sure).

The regrettable thing about flare jeans is that they are essentially impossible to look good in.  If they’re tight and you’re over 6’0” and the flares aren’t so cyclonic as to leave you with a legfull of leaves, then maybe you’re good to go.  Otherwise, though, the comment that flares can make your legs look “long and lean” is just about the most ludicrous statement in recent advertising history.  That’s like saying smoking is good for you.  Flares make you look short and fat and stumpy, and are an egregious assault on aesthetic or fashion senses.

I remember being back in Paris a long time ago, long before my last visit, and down in the subways at night I saw girls wearing flare pants, and I though, “Oh my god, there it is, and here it comes, flare pants will be all over Canada next year.”  Strangely, and thankfully, it never happened.  Quelquefois, meme avec les francais, il y a des faux pas.

Only very lately, I noticed girls walking around, as usual, in tights and ankle-choking jeans, and I couldn’t say I disapproved.  Old Navy must be trying, through the force of marketing and advertising, to turn basic standards on their heads, and say that ugly is pretty and that bad is good, and so on, and make women look bad by wearing flares.  If Old Navy can start a trend and be at the front of it, then Old Navy makes money, no matter how awful it makes women look.

Perturbing things about this ad:

--shown in Canada, but features bowling, something that Canadians do as much as Americans curl—and 10-pin at that (Americans wouldn’t even know there’s another kind of bowling).  It shows Old Navy trying to Patton-ize the world with a steamroll marketing campaign that obliterates local culture (just being American), but of course, many if not most of the most successful advertising companies (b/c let’s face it, that’s what Old Navy is, a brand not clothing) penetrate local markets precisely by being aware of what’s going on and trying to cater to it, rather than trying to bludgeon people into thinking that they should all bowl and eat fries, like Americans who, alas, could never get into their jeans (hence the wish-fulfilment ads).  But then there is that blending of cool and uncool they’re striving for—definitely trying to cover all bases, like a good downmarket piece of advertising ought to.

--the sexless tween robot Asian girl—yes, she’s there b/c Asians represent $, and the girl represents youth who also represent $, but of course she also represents the kind of girl whose figure you’d have to have to fit into those jeans.  She’s a curious mascot who rather evidently doesn’t know what commercial marketing game she’s been induced into.  It’s a little creepy, especially with that Debbie Gibson thing.

Anyway, like I said, I cover the big topics.  Please, no-one, ever, wear flares.  Please. 

(I suppose that last line does cover the whole reason for the post, so please forgive and indulge my wearisome words otherwise.)

"I'm never taking off these pants." 

zr