Food marketing for the subconscious
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There's this grocery store I love. I go there practically every day, some days more than once. I love the wide aisles, the civilized atmosphere, the deli section that caters so comprehensively to people who are no good in the kitchen.
But lately I think the store is trying to drive me crazy. Into every shopping trip, it's injecting little asides. Aphorisms. Injunctions. I'm beginning to think I'm hearing voices.
Hey ... over here!
This is part of some kind of marketing strategy. On the placards that advertise on-sale items - and I love the on-sale items - slogans have begun to appear.
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Game on.
C'mon, grab one more.
The messages are unobtrusive, almost subliminal. They are printed in a font that imitates a human hand, and their punctuation is informal at best. Sometimes they appear all in lower case, as if grabbed from the middle of a sentence.
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They are not talking to me. I understand they are not talking to me. But sometimes, just every once in a while, they seem to contain a hidden meaning that only I will catch. Like the Satanic Bobblehead on that episode of "The Twilight Zone," the sale signs seem to know my fears and anxieties.
To name one: At this stage in my life I don't need to be developing a taste for half & half. I've drunk my coffee black and tough for decades. There's no reason to start adding cream to my cart now. But last evening I went to get some. I felt like celebrating. And lo, the half & half was on sale:
Oh, really?
The sign was mocking me, just as the Satan Bobblehead mocked William Shatner.
Shake it off, I thought. Just get some dinner and head for home. Near the checkout, salsa was on sale. I moved closer to read the message on the sign.
The icing on the cake!
What could that possibly mean? How could salsa be icing on a cake?
I bought my groceries and headed home. But like the Satan Bobblehead, the signs are luring me back. I want to go see if the cake icing is on sale.
And if so, whether it has a message for me.
I'm fighting it.
