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CBS Coming to the Produce Aisle
smooth wombat writes "In the continuing struggle to capture viewers, CBS is pairing with SignStorey Inc. to provide short-form programming designed specifically for shoppers on topics such as health, nutrition, as well as short news and sports items and entertainment. This programming will be displayed on video screens in the produce and deli sections of 1,300 supermarkets nationwide.
Virginia Cargill, the CEO of SignStorey, said CBS will provide 1-2 minutes of programming for each video loop that appears on the in-store monitors. Each loop consists of about 8 minutes, half of which is advertising."
I feel bad for the poor produce section workers that have to listen to the same 8-minute loop for 8 hours a day.
This will probably encourage the trend of people listening to music or talking on the phone *all the time*, in this case just so they don't have to hear the advertisements. I fail to see how this could be successful.
[sig]you really dont want the answers, trust me[/sig]
As it gets harder to reach people at home, everybody still goes to the grocery store.
And I will make it a point to shop at the stores that don't bombard me with extra advertising as I walk down an aisle.
This guy's the limit!
Nothing to see here, and half of it's advertising.
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.
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Hey! They're scoring coconuts now so they're easier to break open!
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Seriously, who cares? Nobody really watches those screens anyway.
Two gas stations near me now have 17 inch flat-panel displays near each gas pump, running news and ads. With loud audio. It's so annoying that I switched gas stations.
There has been TV advertising in supermarkets in Russia and the CIS for a long time.
This may come as a shock to middle management, but people don't want to watch commercials. The supermarket is already a clogged toilet of happy-talk announcer voices, video screens, blaring signs, surveillance cameras, one cashier for 15 customers and constant harping about signing over your credit profile to avoid being charged penalties of up to 75% on food.
The last thing people want to see is some blow-dried "my voice is smiling" asshole reading a 30-second factoid from a teleprompter while people try to find a box of breakfast cereal that doesn't annihilate a $10 bill.
Unplug the fucking televisions. At least give people the dignity of being ripped off in peace.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Ummm... offworld colonies! Replicants! Yay!
Still waiting for the "basic pleasure model"
Trusted by cats.
I'm not a huge fan of advertising because I hate paying increased prices for products -- I tend to buy generic if the quality is close (or I just make dinner from scratch). Yet advertising is a huge portion of the economy, and if the old media formats don't work, the companies have to evolve.
I actually like this form of advertising IF it gives me some interesting information. If it is the same 4 minute segment run over months, I'll ignore it and it will likely fail. If they give me something interesting to do with produce, I can actually see it working.
"Buying onions? Try them with Hamburger Helper for a delicious meal for the family!" isn't going to get me to buy packaged junk. But if they combine it with an interesting recipe (or fact) about the onion, I may just stick around to watch it.
For those anti-advertising in general, remember that much of the old media that you might have loved (think: Firefly, Futurama, etc) may have died because advertisers wouldn't pay for it -- and we never had the chance to ourselves. Don't knock advertising until you understand how forcing millions to pay a nickel more for a product might be better than asking a few tens of thousands of media users to pay $5 each.
Then again, the iTunes format may destroy TV and radio anyway. I guess CBS is seeing the forest for the trees.
Just like I'm all for those stupid "club cards". I used to hate them, until I realized that the suckers who didn't use them were subsidizing me, along with the free advertising and coupons. It's well worth it to me for them to know how many tampons my wife buys in exchange for lower prices. Same theory.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I don't want to be shopping for groceries while my DVR/Tivo has recorded a big game only to find out the results from some stupid 4 minute sports highlight in the grocery store.
See, all you skeptics! It's 2006 and we *are* living in the future!
Who cares if we aren't flying to work in our personal hover cars/jet packs, haven't cured the common cold, haven't eradicated hunger, or, heck, solved any of life's huge questions, when we have all the advertising promised us in films such as Blade Runner and Minority Report?
Seriously, though, I'm so fscking sick of seeing all those video screens running ads in the grocery store every week. Food Network at the checkout counter, adapalooza back by the dairy products, and now CBS in the deli/produce section. I spend about $120/week at that store, and their only thought is how they can make my time in their store even more unpleasant. Thanks a lot, guys.
I wish we still had independent grocery stores where I live...
CBS's entire network is an utter disaster except for their sports division. Their news desk has been shamed and discredited, their mainstream programming is garbage. CBS Sports is a competant division with some decent sports journalists. The rest of the network is garbage. I'm sure there's some redeeming shows that some of you watch but I can't remember the last I time I even noticed CBS except when it was in the news for various journalistic integrity scandals.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
will it display personal advertisement, once I wear my soon obligatory RFID-tag or do I have to wait until I can enter the store only after they did an iris scan and checked my terrorism background?
"People who are willing to sacrifice essential freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
B F
shame if anything were to "happen" to it.
This disgusts me. We need to come up with a test, to be administered at birth, to identify potential marketing/advertising types so we can leave them out to be devoured by wolves.
Screw the advertisers. I really dislike this whole advertising based culture we are evolving into. In the 70s it wasn't that bad. Shows would run ads which EVERYONE would just avoid watching by going out to the kitchen to get a snack or something. But now, these monsters want to force you to see their useless ads. Fortunately there are some of us that advertising doesn't work on at all. I think it might be due to my high score on the autism scale, but I can easily ignore ads and only purchase what I want, when I want it. There is no one who can convince me to buy something that I don't need. If only the rest of the population were like this. This sort of criminality would disappear overnight. Sadly the rest of the population is easily lead.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
>
> Hey! They're scoring coconuts now so they're easier to break open!
Because if a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a handgun, and those coconuts are gonna get scored like a butterfly ballot made of beef jerky and left to cure an alligator-infested Florida swamp.
Seriously, Dan, we never knew you had a Slashdot account! How's the turnip soup? I love biscuits with gravy.
Uh...if they do it right, the whole thing will be advertising. 8 minutes might be traditional 30-second spots, but the rest of the content will be either infomercial (Today-show-ish) or pure product placement.
to shop at small operations and locally owned stores and chains. Here in Southern California there are Trader Joe's and Henry's stores, both relatively pleasent shopping experiences. Even they are getting a bit too commercial for my taste though. I feel like I am in some failed pavlovian experiment everytime I go into a large supermarket. The executives who run these publicly traded companies use a behavioral approach, instead of asking "what would I like if I were shopping here". Ruins the whole thing.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
...Just installed 10 or so 40 inch plasmas suspended from the ceiling and a 17" LCD in every checkout lane.
They show the "Walmart Network" on a recurring loop.
I just wish I could order that channel on Dish Network or DirecTV.
It could have valuable and informative programming on it that will stir my imagination, enrich my mind and possibly motivate me to buy something that I don't know (yet) that I need.
later, gotta go punch the monkey and win.
Albertsons has already done this in the last year.
They have ads blaring in both the produce section, deli section, and at every checkout aisle.
The monitors are OSD locked. Even the power button doesn't work.
But you can still unplug the checkout aisle ads.
In frustration I refuse to shop there anymore. Rather sick of them requiring a plastic card for their faux "savings" anyway.
Anyway, this sort of thing (the big ads everywhere) won't be happening at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods I'd wager. . . which is where my girlfriend shops anyway.
I don't shop, that's wimmins work. *ducks* I keed, I keed. But I do make her shop or promise not to complain about stuff I bought at Jewel. Her choice.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
How long before CBS can transmit to disposable, flexible displays in produce shrinkwrapping? Or even to displays inkjetted directly onto produce, then engineered into the produce itself?
We're already close with radio networks and organic displays. What about tapping the energy in the produce itself to drive displays before it all wilts?
--
make install -not war
If they carried the anti-Co$ South Park shows, I do think I'd go shopping a bit for orften.
maybe carry some childcare tips from Chef, too
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
rather than going to buy food and getting random bits of television, why couldn't they work on technology that allows me to reach inside my television and get random bits of food?
"oh look! CSI! and a burrito!"
even though you may not understand what i'm talking about, i rest assured that homer simpson knows exactly what i mean
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm with Bill Hicks on this one: all marketeers, salesdroids and advertisers should kill themselves. One of the biggest reasons I don't shop at either of the two Albertson's in my town is that one of them has these widescreen TV's yelling shit at you while you try to guess which vegetables to buy. I seriously hope they don't bring this to the other grocers in my area.
Nathan's blog
In the continuing struggle to provide consumers with privacy, Rent-A-Plug will provide short-term ear plugs renting, designed specifically for shoppers at 1,300 supermarkets nationwide, where SignStorey and CBS will provide video screens in the produce and deli sections.
Virginia Adkill, the CEO of Rent-A-Plug said, the company will prodive sterile ear plugs for consumers, who wish to spare themselves listening to store advertising. The specially designed, revolutionary earplugs will filter out only advertising noise, while allow maintaining conversations with other shoppers and supermarket staff.
Customers, who signed up supermarket issued cards, to collect points for their purchases, will be given a choice to convert their bonus to get Rent-A-Plug earplugs for free, instead of the usual grocery items.
Umm, you opt-in for lower prices.
Or you don't and fail to take advantage of the specials.
Or you do what I do, and tell them "I forgot my card" every time and punch in a fake phone number, thereby taking advantage of the savings without opting in. Hooray!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Looks like it is finally time to break down and get one of these.
Personally I welcome our new televisual, grocery overlords.
But I didn't chime in in a meeting earlier today and I wanted to add something useless to SOME conversation.
And say something about wimmens work. HR told me to stop doing it in the office.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
It's hard enough to get my wife out of the grocery store as it is. Add TV to the mix and I'm going to be a bachelor.
That is unacceptable to these advertising bastards, so they want to put a frickin TV there.
Oh well, they're trying to put TVs on buses and trains here in Denver, and I've seen such in other cities already. The whole advantage to taking transit is I can read instead of marvel at other people's driving skills. I can't read when a TV is blaring. I don't have the antibodies for it. I watch about 2 hours of TV a week, so I am as helpless as a kitten at tuning it out.
At least they're not beaming ads into my dreams yet.
Man, you really need that seminar!
No, all of it will be advertising.
Consider a magazine with exactly one advertiser, entirely supported by that advertiser's dollars. These do exist. The "articles" are little different from the ads. The material identified as ads is at least presented honestly as persuasion, not information. The material identifed as articles is misrepresented as information when in fact it is persuasion.
Take a look at the helpful health video running in the waiting room at your eye doctor, dentist, etc. Same deal. They're not blurring the line, they're obliterating the line between advertising and information.
It will be no different in the supermarket. What advertising insiders call "short form programming" you will call ads. If the entire video was identified as ads, it would at least be presented as what it is. But it won't be; half of it will be passed off as "information".
The result will be not just intrusive and annoying, it will be dishonest and misleading.
I'd be all over the produce section. I remember watching 'Kill the Wabbit' while standing in line for a rollercoaster at an amusement park years ago. It made waiting in line almost fun.
Moderation in All Things... Especially Moderation - gurutc
I moved every 6 months in college (dorm life) therefore I got all my club cards right as I was leaving one room to move to the next. If you butcher the spelling of your name well enough the annoying mailers never quite make it to your new dorm across campus, and the grocery store / club doesn't know your true identity.
And kids, NEVER i mean NEVER fill out a credit card application from a credit card company that shows up on campus. I don't care if the T-shirt is free. I was smart enough never to do it but I know people who were not so lucky.
I'm already using earplugs to cover the SO's snoring at night... guess I'll buy a spare set for using at the grocery store.
Anything other than the products themselves that cause people to stop in the middle of the aisle (especially the produce section!) is bad news in my book.
The grocery stores in my area are packed enough as it is without people gawking at television screens and clogging up the aisles.
"half of which is advertising" So its the same as normal tv then. :p
~Petaris "The world is open. Are you?"
This is an appropriate venue to advertise for my new favorite product:
TV-B-Gone Universal TV Power Remote Control Keychain
It's a keychain which turns off televisions.
Microsoft employees in Vista revolt
Bring me the head of Monkey Boy
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30490
and
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/03/vista-2007-f
I find it completely reasonable - as well as entertaining - to unplug those unruly flat-screen squak boxes that are hanging all over the supermarket.
Silence is golden...
At Jewel supermarkets in Chicago they have flat-screens at the produce section and checkout already, and yeah, I imagine it'd be annoying as hell for the checkers.
I don't know that I pay any attention to them when I shop - maybe other people do, but they don't do much for me other than make me very, very glad that I don't work at a supermarket.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I've been seeing these at the Albertson's in Mountain View, CA for the last few months, at least. Big widescreen TVs with infomercials, one of which has Donald Trump in it (?!) and the others talk about this and that having anti-oxidents and what not. They also have these big TV's by the checkout lines but I don't remember what those talk about. 1/3 of all the checkout lines are now do-it-yourself, too.
Can't I just buy some frigg'n produce!? If I wanted to watch TV I'd just grab a box of Krispie Creams and sit on the couch.
And by the way, this isn't the TV aisle, can you move so I can get some onions?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Seriously, who cares? Nobody really watches those screens anyway.
Or watches them specifically to buy from their competitors? (The more annoying the commercial, the more likely I am to buy another product. I don't have a Dyson or an Oreck vacuum cleaner: I have a Hoover. And thanks, I'm not a hausfrau who is sufficiently ignorant of the laws of physics to believe in bagless vacuums not blowing fine clouds everywhere, nor do I wish to have a vacuum cleaner which is so much flimsy crap that it only weighs 8lbs.)
Leslie Moonves at CBS has done a number of very stupid things over the past two years. Dan Rather's booting. Jack FM formats and David Lee Roth. The spite lawsuit against Howard Stern. And now this.
Anyone wanna bet that Howard and Robin are going to have a field day with this one?
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Microsoft employees revolting!!!
They certainly are! *rimshot*
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
in the grocery store. it's already got enough noise/video pollution to make me think i've stumbled into the game section of my local video store by mistake.
i have to agree with the person looking for some measurment to weed out advertising types at birth. maybe send them to school as taxidermists or something.
advertising is the bane of our age but many take it for granted, like a person who never realizes that not all people eat macaroni and cheese prepared from a box for every meal. there is more to life than clever lies from advertisers. i wonder if we'll ever escape it enough to see just how pernicious it is. my guess is no.
on the other hand maybe i can take advantage of it. anybody want to buy some "quiet?" i'll have commercials up next week...............
soon they'll be implanting chips in us at birth so the advertizers know who we are and will feed ads to the screen based on our 'preferences'
... for lawyers. I can't wait when someone sues SignStorey, CBS and the supermarket for an accident, caused by the distruction of the tv screen.
It's not enough that they've started running this crap at the checkout at most megamarts (and most large grocery stores belong to one of three or four national chains) but they've got to ambush shoppers in the aisles now?
Yet another reason to frequent your locally owned and operated grocer.
The Shaw's in my neck of the woods has one of these beasts hanging near the deli section. But there aren't self scanners in the store. What the hell.
Its easy for me to ignore since I usually shop with headphones plugged into my ears. Makes for a less stressful experience.
But I can imagine that just like Muzak, this will get on your nerves if you see it more than once a day. Sort of like those little interesting billboards they put in some laundromats. They only start to suck when the same one has been up for months on end.
Is also a rip-off?
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Apparently some stations are now doing something so you have to decline a car wash before you can start the gas pumping after swiping your card too. To my understanding, my dad was waiting for about three minutes before figuring this out, and was *not* happy about it.
Yeah, it's a little intrusive. Just a bit...
Someone should hack those things to change the options, maybe a randomized thing based on some function of the date and the last digit of the card number, in order to make it seem like an urban legend until you see it for yourself:
Would you like a car wash today?1. Yes, please.
2. No thanks, I like my paint.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Of course you're seeing that in Mountain View, CA. You might as well be on the starship enterprise compared to Central Ohio... let me fill you in. People here would be all, "look, maw! look, jim-bo! this store's got one o' them h-dee tee-vee's! well, shoot the horse and slap me silly, you some bitch monkey nuts!" and then queue the beer drinking, indoor-smoking, rival-school-color-car-flipping, backwoods hee-haw nonsense you probably sometimes see on the news...in Albertsons... on their HDTV.
stuff |
We brought this upon ourselves.
Where were the people who complained when movie theaters started showing commercials before a movie starts? Where are the people who complained when theaters expanded these commercials to over 20 minutes before a movie starts? Did anyone stop going to the theater?
Did anyone stop shopping at stores that plastered advertising in the parking lot? You know, the shopping centers that started installing advertising, like rotating posters telling you where to shop? Did anyone boycott stores that used that form of advertising?
Or are people sheep? Do you see a coke product, not as traditional advertising, but as a product placement in a movie, and you go and buy it? Will you buy pizza hut pizza if you see Jessica Simpson eat it in a movie. Do you think eating that pizza will give you her body? Or do you think that drinking a budwiser beer will turn you into a sports star?
Did anyone stop buying from a company that has no humans in their call centers? Did we say it is okay to be on hold for 30 minutes, while we listen to advertising, while trying to get the automated system to help up with a product we PAID for?
Come on, we are the problem. They will keep selling us crap if we keep buying it. They will keep invading our sensibilities if we allow it.
What is next? Will AT&T change the service agreement, so before each phone call, we will have to listen to a short 30 second recording... "This phone call was brought to you by Sam Adams, always a good chioce. Thank you for using AT&T, your call will now be completed".
Like I'd stop watching the mom beating the child in the middle of the aisle to watch something about nutrition!
This is simply the evolution of popups into our physical world. More and more invasive advertising. Its not really advertising, its SPAM - unsoliticed and inserted at a place that is inappropriate.
What about advertisement screens in the toilet stall so that you are subjected to ads while taking a crap? "Having a problem! Try Brand-X Laxative!".
Clockwork Orange
Am I the only one who is getting tired of being assaulted by video advertising everywhere? It's in the mall near my house--large plasma TVs scattered around the mall advertising movies, electronics, and the wonders of mall giftcards. It's in the grocery store, where LCD panels at the checkouts play food-channel type cooking soundbites and advertisements for the latest in precooked dinners.
I don't mind ads that are billboards or signs, and I can generally put up with the ads they're inserting in Musak these days. But the combination is really annoying for some reason. All I can think of is the store Tom Cruise enters in Minority Report, where the TV is saying "Hello, Mr. ____, would you like to buy a turtleneck in green?"
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Advertising burns through cash in dot-com style. Cutting the ads back or completely away, would save a big chunk of the budget and allow the company to either reinvest the surplus back into the company, or undercut their competitors on price, or more likely just funnel the surplus in to the pockets of the management. Whichever way, or combination, ads aren't needed as much as MBAs like to think they are. Above a certain quantity or outside a certain time/place/demographic, it's just a waste of company money.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
They work in the produce section! If they could remember things for more than 8 minutes they'd be working in the meat department!
Rubberband, bent paperclip, cracked screen. Soon they'll realize that $100/day in revenue less $1000/week in repair costs is negative income.
i'm sorry, but i can't see where this is any kind of interesting development in the tech world...
is it really "news for nerds"..."stuff that matters"?
I've got a wife that won't go into the grocery store until there's nothing in the house. She's sole-bread-winner while I'm back in school so I offer to get the groceries myself. She apparently hates whatever I pick out (even though she always denies this no matter how hard I try to secretly monitor what she eats, what brands, what's more common so I can buy those things) and has demonstrated time and again that she has no concept of the cost of groceries (becuase she thinks $50 at a restaurant is somehow more fulfilling than $20 for bread, milk, pasta, etc.)
Any ammount of my own money used for groceries just encourages her to not buy groceries (after all, we must have something in the house if I'm not dead yet) and she pretends to not know what we do and do not have ("oh, we ran out of that? But we bought some last week!" "Yeah, but we go through one a day and you said we only needed 2, even though I explained how soon it would run out." "No, we can't... I thought I saw some in the fridge yesterday" "Not unless yesterday was 6 days ago."
Sorry, had to rant. She won't listen after all.
You know that's not true. The issue of Club Cards has been hashed over and over here, but the bottom line is that most do not require any personal identifiers. That the stores give shoppers value in return allowing them to better understand purchase trends is not scandalous in the least except to the tinfoil hat crowd. Get over it.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Get one of those watches with the universal remote contol. You could at least change it to something you like. Hours of fun at your fingertips while you drive the produce manager crazy.
And while I'm here, there's got to be a couch potato joke lurking here somewhere but I've yet to find it.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
An excuse to buy one of these puppies: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/755e/
I've been threatening to take one of these to my local sports bar (2 dozen TVs, at least) and watch the hilarity ensue. Too bad they got the best wings in town and I don't want to get keel-hauled by the "regulars".
Turn off the TVs in the supermarket? Hell yeah.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Who knew.
I'm not an irrational person. I'm not an inherently aggressive person. I can't lie to you, though: This idea arouses an image of physical destruction, specifically me throwing canned vegetables at these screens. I find grocery shopping to be a chore in the first place, something which I have to concentrate on in order to do well. I don't want a screen in constant view trying to change my attitudes about my brand of butter.
Ideology breeds Hypocrisy. Just how much is up to you.
Sounds like another good reason to take your MP3 player shopping.
because now the TV junkies will stop and stare at the monitors and clog the superarket aisles.
If this shows up at HEB, I'm going elsewhere.
I'll be damned if I'm going to watch commercials in the friggin' supermarket. I'll find another local market or... gasp... shop at costco. Somehow, I don't think costco's going to be putting 100's of TVs in their warehouses along each aisle just to spew advertising.
I don't view ads on my computer. I don't watch commercials on TV. I throw away all junk mail at my mailbox. All my numbers are on the do-not-call list. I don't subscribe to any magazines or newspapers.
When computers get good enough to do real-time visual adblocking, I'll be the first one wearing some VR headset that filters out billboards, logos, and everything else that's advertising related.
The opposite of discount is not penalty. How about student discounts? or Senior discounts? If I park incorrectly in a public place, I may get a monitary penalty, but that doesn't mean everyone else got a parking discount.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I'm shopping, not a captive audience!
Wonder if permanent marker will work well on the screens?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
CBS Radio isn't making a dime now that you-know-who went to Sirius, and they'll have to pay for all his legal bills when the lawsuit they filed against him gets dismissed - or the massive countersuit that'll be filed if it isn't dismissed due to a clueless judge.
They need the revenue stream.
I work in an office building where there's a 60" plasma screen TV by the guards desk and 15" LCD TVs in the elevators. I wish they played informational healthy eating tips and commercials only; instead, they play Fox News 24-7.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I am SO thankful that my wife does the grocery shopping. There have been things that flash leds and stick out in the narrow aisles now for a few year -- then video screens with ads on them?! What's next, some mechanical arm grabs your ankle as you walk by and forces you answer some sort of e-opinion polls to be released?
I think it's Esso's that have these now.
The damned things start at you as soon as you put your credit card in and start filling up.
They are annoying as hell, add no value and are filled with ads.
Suffice to say that I boycott Esso.
If these things are run on ordinary t.v. monitors they can be turned off with the t.v. b-gone universal remote. At some point people have to fight back against the big brotherish aspects of our society. Thus far at least the telescreen has an off switch. And no I have no association whatsoever with the t.v. b-gone people I just think it's cool.
http://www.tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_main.php
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
The stores think they can get away with this bullshit. Charging more for things then putting prices back the way they were with some lame-ass card? Won't work on me, or anyone old enough to remember the happier times before these became popular.
So, if you can't beat 'em, fuck them at their own game!
Use bogus cards, use somebody else's card, use a new card every time. Their puny attempt at gathering data is hopelessly corrupted. They lose money every time you get a new card. Someday it will become apparent that this is costing them money and the madness just might stop!
I guess we have different ways of dealing with abuse like this. If I can find a solution that
Gives me what I want
Costs the bastards
Makes me laugh
then I think I just won.
Man, you really need that seminar!
"If anyone here works in marketing or advertising .... kill yourself. Seriously ... there's no punchline coming ... there's no rationalisation for what you do, you're filling the world with bile and garbage, you're fucked and you're fucking us ... kill yourself now."
-- Bill Hicks --
...another reason to have groceries delivered.
I predict that there will be a run on these little babies:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/755e/
I'll be turning off the displays every chance I get.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
In the produce section, and at each checkout line. Already conditioned to tune them out....
FYI your sig link doesn't work... do you know where that article is now?
...this project will cause sales of TV B Gone devices to skyrocket.
;-)
Mine works very well, thank you. If my local Safeway pulls this crap, I expect to put the little widget to good use.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Department stores already have product ads running on flat-screen TV's (especially in the perfume section). MacDonald's has TV ads running at the order line. My post office has stupid TV ads running while waiting in line. Now my grocery store too?
THANK HEAVENS FOR TV-B-GONE!
I have found that anyone who spends more than say 10-15 minutes in Walmart gets "Walmart Sickness" where they appear slightly intoxicated and more aggressive than usual. Course this is the South, that may be normal behavior *wink*.
The screens that play repetative loops, especially Martina McBride singing "How Far" again and again and again... well that just doesn't help.
How about interactive screens that tell me where the hell they have moved the item(s) I am looking for? Oh, they want me to buy their overstocked product instead. Ah, clever aren't they.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
The problem is the cost of making a 3 ton chocolate bar.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
In the supermarket there is music while you work
It drives you crazy, sends you screaming for the door
Work there for a year or two and you can get to like it
I don't work in supermarkets anymore
- from Instant Mash by Joe Jackson 1979
I will be avoiding supermarkets with this garbage in the aisles.
Corn, Beans and Squash have always been on the produce aisle.....
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
...you simply give phony information on the application. The stores I've got the things with don't care, and don't do any sort of identity check prior to issuing the things.
Example: My own card references a PO box in Berkeley, CA that hasn't been used in years, the wrong Zip code for that box, and a name borrowed from one of the pioneers of the Amateur Radio Service.
Granted, the stores may eventually change their rules to get the silly cards, but I'd wager there'll still be ways to 'beat the system' as it were.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I'm moving to the Yukon.
What?
My TV-B-Gone just arrived yesterday. This'll be fun!
We only want a quiet place to finish working while God eats our brains.
--Bruce Sterling
Just Great! So your telling me they're gonna put a very annoying repeating message right next to the guy with the butcher knife!?!?
Everything is super-cheap, and stacked to the ceiling. You either bring your own bags, or buy some from them, or use their leftover boxes.
No *way* are they going to be wasting space on something like this. And the advertisers wouldn't want our eyeballs (those of us who shop there) anyway.
The price breaks are for promotional specials. Grocery stores have always done this, the only difference is they now want to use cards to track stuff. (whether or not they should be tracking us is non-relevant to your assertion)
The prices are BELOW their normal everyday prices and the goods basket revolves on a weekly basis. Just like it always did. It's an incentive to get more shoppers in the door with the expectation that they're still going to buy goods that are not on sale.
Now if you can back up an assertion that they've upcharged everything and now gouge on all but the promotionals, heck I'll even take an intarweb blog as a beginning of proof, then you've got something.
Otherwise this is just Chicken Little stuff. And we should probably change nicks.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .