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| Hit | 55% | 71 votes | Total: 128 votes | |
| Miss | 45% | 57 votes |
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Add to FavoritesFor the first time in two decades, big box store giant Wal-Mart has changed its theme: "Always Low Prices". The old TV commercial that went with the slogan showed cartoon happy faces flying around the store slashing prices.
I like the new commercial, "Save Money. Live Better", which is pitched to the start of the school year. It features live on-camera actor-customers giving testimonials about how they're better off because "saving money on little things adds up and helps families live better."
With 5,000 stores throughout the world, Wal-Mart's annual revenues exceed $350 billion. It has two million employees, and will soon expand its 44 stores in China by buying out its closest rival there, Trust-Mart. This could add as many as 250,000 more employees to its payroll, with still lots of space to expand in the largest country in the world.
All is not rosy for Wal-Mart. It is constantly fighting off criticism, as well as numerous lawsuits and penalties imposed by local and federal government agencies. Its most publicized problem is the accusation that it encourages illegal Mexican immigration with promises of jobs in its US stores, and then pays the undocumented employees wages far below what citizens earn at similar jobs.
US labor unions are up in arms about the Mexican immigrant competition, accusing Wal-Mart's employment practices cause loss of jobs for its members. Even the Chinese stores are beginning to show labor rights rumblings. Recently employees in its Shanghai store, the biggest and most successful in China, formed a chapter of the Communist Party, and are demanding better working conditions and higher pay.
Wal-Mart has also been accused for many years of opening big-box branches of its store in communities and devastating all retail competition within a radius of 26 miles. However, Wal-Mart continues to expand around the world, and counters criticism by showing statistics that its employment and prices practices save families thousands of dollars a year, thence the new slogan, "Save Money. Live Better." Maybe a more realistic new theme should be, "All's Fair In Love And Retail."
I like the new slogan, and will continue to shop at Wal-Mart. At least I will until someone proves to me that I save money because the merchandise is made by underpaid child slave laborers, and I meet too many poverty-stricken store clerks there who can't speak English.
Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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Miss
The absurdities of all absurdities is to make a slogan telling people to save money and to live better. Of course, Wall-Mart was intending to play on a bizarre contradiction but they ended up telling people to shop less. It is almost like a blind date asking his date,what do you do? Instead of getting slapped in the face by assuming that a total stranger was like his mother, he might have got answered, I live.
Wall-mart has built in the past few months a really nasty reputation. What with the stampedes that killed an employee to scam artists from Canada using their Western Union, what they needed was a slogan like, We all make mistakes, come back.
Obviously that might work to close down every last Wall-Mart in the country. And, wouldn't that be a shame, not to mention a waste of buildings most of them new. For the sake of keeping those building open, let us parse the slogan. We begin with Save money.
Saving money is fine and dandy. But, most Wall-Mart shoppers are living on a fixed budget. They are already saving money by shopping at Wall-Mart. To save even more money, they will have to forego that new tennis shoe with glitter laces. That might work for the shopper but how is that going to work for Wall-Mart? If they have 1000 pairs of glittering lace tennis shoes selling for 30 dollars and no one buys them, they will have to give them away at half price and get a pair free. That kind of selling will eventually force them to close down.
We can now see that telling shoppers to save money is not very wise, actually I have never heard of a more condescending and ripping down your own place of business phrase. Obviously the genius who thought of save money must have been spending money at Bloomindales and is now telling people to scale down to the level of Wall-Marts. Really! Thanks a lot.
What about those of us who have been shopping at Wall-Marts all of our lives. How do we save money, what do we down scale to? Dollar General? Maybe.
And the live better finish is like a shutting of the coffin on Wall-Marts. Are you teling us that we can live better by not shopping as much or spending as much money? Actually, makes sense to me.
I intend to take their advice and spend less. Who knows I may save enough to buy a real outfil from Bloomindales. Which brings me to my conclusion that Wall-Marts missed the mark with its new slogan. However, I will be charitable and offer them my sincerest form of well wishes for shocking me into the realization that by spending two hundred a month at Wall-Marts on clothes, I could save three months of two hundreds and buy an outfit from a department store that caters only to clothes. I would be saving money ,and I would be definitely living better.
Learn more about this author, Nora Nick Katsourakis.
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