|
| Foocha! is a non-profit Web site. We do it for kicks, not for cash. If you're interested in writing for the site, click here |
|
 |
| WH Smith’s ‘AMAZING ADVENTURES’,
Cheap marketing gimicks |
|
 |
|
| Media,
Jerry Carpenter,
15 January 2001 |
Rating: F5
|
|
| |
| |
|
Golf ! Cook ! Flirt ! Falcon! – this is the jazz poetry of leisure pursuits as your favourite newsagent chain sees it. Ok, you want it in layman’s terms. This last Saturday I’m doing my usual zombie-like scanning of the rag-mags propping the shelves in WH Smith, when I’m blown out from under my boredom-fog by an array of shiny boxes each emblazoned with one word commands – ‘GOLF’. ‘COOK’, ‘FLIRT’, ‘FALCON’. Well, ‘Falcon’ isn’t strictly a call to action, but read on regardless. As the initial product shock experience fades, I realise that WH have decided to sell Fun in a box. The sort of Fun that you usually only come across in the back pages of Sunday supplements. The sort of Fun that costs money, and in some cases, like ‘FLY’, a 30 minute spell in a Mig fighter jet, quite a lot of money.
There’s about twenty of these ‘Amazing Adventures’ to pick, ranging from the cheapish end – an afternoon learning Salsa dancing coming in under 100 squids, to the Donald Trumpish days out – in outer space on a SPACE SHIP !!!, a snip at 100,000 squids. Each fancy box contains a bunch of subject related stuff, a couple of CD-Roms, a book or two, and best of all, a lovely certificate which is filled in after the event to prove, that, yes – you did spend an afternoon with a large bird of prey strapped to your wrist. My favourite part of this is that, as I pored over each box, I kept coming up with ideas for better ‘Adventures’ I thought should be there – and the gag is on second looking, I realised that these ideas were there too !. So sure enough, there was a fun box allowing you a day of learning how to go on the pull – ‘Flirt’, and a box for learning how to become a TV presenter called ‘TV’. Wow – TV !, flirting !, it’s all there.
The only really flaw in Smithy’s plan is that, for all the instant appeal of picking up a box that can take you into space, it’s feels kind of weird doing so. For one thing, who really wants to be seen taking the ‘Flirt’ box to the sales counter, and secondly, who’s going to spend that much money on anything in a shop you’re more used to spending a fiver on a travel guide in ?. I clocked the reaction to the Fun boxes from Joe Public, and it wasn’t suggestive of a ‘selling like hot-cakes’ situation. So maybe the whole thing will fail, as people get their Fun cheaper and more conveniently from the nearest pub, but just for the weekend these dumb boxes have supplied me with my biggest hardest laughs in ages. Hardy-har-har !.
Top Home |
|
|
|
|
