Wandering around my local Tesco yesterday I noticed that there is an absolutely huge volume of products now carrying Union jack merchandising. Everything from Soreen fruit loafs to washing powders!
Now, how does this merchandising work to the benefit of the supplier? I can visually scan shelves of products and register what everything is and pick up what I need as I recognise the packaging - yesterday I would need to stop and pick up the products as the normal packaging is covered in Union Jacks.
So what may have become spontaneous purchases for me were lost as I wouldn't buy anything with this garish packaging. And I know there will be thousands like me who won't have anything to do with Union Jacks etc.
But, does the reverse actually work? Are there consumers and buyers out there who will get attracted to this packaging and actually buy items that they normally wouldn't buy?
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Just jumping on the jubilee bandwagon.
However if a maker were to plaster a Union Flag on a product not made here then i would make it my business never to buy from them again.
Indian built Tata with union flag on boot sold as City Rover, and Belling microwaves made in China...cheap confidence tricks worthy of George Cole's excellent spiv characters.
Dislike garish opportunistic displays anyway.
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I have, in my time, sold Union Flag emblazoned products to major national retailers. They always get this so badly wrong when they also fill there Irish and Scottish branches with this stuff as well, where always to their shock and dismay...it doesn't sell !
Go figure guys ! ( as the "cousins" might have it )
:-)
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Oh and before you start, I do know the difference between their and there !
I'm only a bloke and I'm muttytsking at the moment...
:-)
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When we still had plenty of national self-confidence and thought we mattered we had no need to advertise the fact. Our national inferiority complex dates from the 1950s, when we felt we had to display the Union Flag all over the place for self-reassurance, even on underpants.
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>> Our national inferiority complex dates from the 1950s, when we felt we had to display the Union Flag all over the place for self-reassurance, even on underpants.
What on earth are you talking about draiber?
Union flags started appearing on underwear and market tat in the sixties, not the fifties when everything was grey or beige. And they were nothing to do with an inferiority complex, more to do with Lunging Swindon or wherever the place was, and for the growing throngs of tourists. British tat producers and retailers had the great good fortune that their national flag was garish and vulgar enough to suit the purpose, so the patriotic aspect was just a bonus.
Americans take their flag far more seriously than we take ours.
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>> Americans take their flag far more seriously than we take ours.
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Too true. Americans salute their flag... (daily in schools).
Many of our citizens leave them in the side of the road, or in waste bins...
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>>Too true. Americans salute their flag
But they haven't got a monarch (says a Roundhead).
;>)
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>> Americans salute their flag
>> But they haven't got a monarch (says a Roundhead).
No, they haven't. They have a succession of big political operators of extremely variable quality, who are supposed when elected to suddenly represent the entire nation instead of just some segment of it. There's something essentially destabilizing about an executive head of state, forever associated with a particular political agenda and often pursuing it while in office.
Our arrangement is much cooler, however much rabid, clacking rationalists may think they despise it. Our 'national identity' isn't skewed uncomfortably this way and that with every general election. We can take the flag and even the monarch lightly if we choose to. No one will get annoyed with us for failing to salute the flag or the monarch, because only the armed forces are expected to. But they still help us to remember who we are.
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Looking at ERT, the trade magazine for electrical retailing today, it has pictures of several items in union jack livery that I doubt many people would have in the house. A freestanding cooker, a Sebo upright cleaner that won't be cheap, and ditto a smeg fridge, yours for just under £1200.
www.builtincookers.co.uk/smeg-fab28-union-jack-product,1830.aspx
Actually I think it's a sort of inverted marketing. You see one of these, think 'yuk!' and buy the black one! A bit like those dayglo green Mondeos that Ford released a few years ago.
Last edited by: VxFan on Sat 19 May 12 at 20:11
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>>A bit like those dayglo green Mondeos
Or even those 'green', 3 series beemers?
;>>)
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Don't start - see latest pic on the other side !
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>> latest pic on the other side !
Er, the other side of what exactly?
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Ah, the apple-green chrome.
Me don't tink so. A bit quiet for my taste frankly, er...
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>> Even the Germans are at it!
>>
>> www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/offers_week21Sunday12.htm
It's a pity that they're not all (if any) drawn correctly. tinyurl.com/1dvw
Last edited by: L'escargot on Sat 19 May 12 at 07:44
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Union Jack merchandise - -
