Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The One Where I Rant About Walmart

I'd like to preface this by saying that I know substantial numbers of people who work at Walmarts across America, and I wish them well and I hope they all always have jobs. That said...

Walmart
. It's an oversized monument to what I don't like about capitalism. Even its supporters are kind of embarrassed to admit that they shop there. (It's like you might catch a glimpse of me in a Walmart, but I might not say hey.)

It's kind of like the corporation version of Dick Cheney.

The other night it was in the news. For changing its logo. From the familiar stamp-ish looking "WAL*MART" to the kindler, gentler "Walmart (with a sunburst)". If you've missed this, you can go to the Walmart website and see it. Soon stores will gradually have the WAL*MART removed from their behemoth building fronts, to be replaced with "Walmart (with a sunburst)."

Walmart-with-a-sunburst, your logo looks like it belongs to a daycare, or, worse, Kinderfoto. Fail.

Get some people on your side who know about marketing and can live with the self-hatred that probably comes with being in an upper-level office position at Walmart-with-a-sunburst.

Realize that no, you cannot be Target. Targets will just always be more aesthetically pleasing and have better commercials. Realize that you do not actually want to be Target, because your "target" audience default-shops at Walmart anyway and the people who hate you generally also hate Target. At least where I live, the Target looks like a stylized ghost town with inexplicable big red metal balls in front. Because it's right next to the Walmart (which currently is still WAL*MART, by the way.) This is also kind of inexplicable, but I digress.

I'm still harping about the Kinderfoto. What were you thinking?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What you said about WAL*MART and capitalism...so true.