Payless ShoeSource has a deal so good that they can’t help but yell. Actually, that’s not true. They took things one annoying step further and decided that the best way to discuss their 1/2 off sandals is by yelling through a megaphone.
There are some simple rules advertisers should never break:
1. Don’t bother singing in your ad. Roughly 99.9% of the time it’s awful and we can’t stand listening to it once let alone multiple times.
2. Don’t yell at the consumer. Yelling is the default way to express excitement in most ads and it’s also the most annoying. If the ad airs late at night, that yelling is even worse and unforgivable.
3. Don’t patronize the consumer. If your deal is 1/2 off something that’s probably pretty overprices, or 1/2 off an item which isn’t even that expensive, stop trying to generate buzz.
Well, it looks like Payless is guilty on two of the three counts above. That’s pretty bad. It’ll probably only be a matter of time until we see a Payless ad for 1/2 off sandals where people are yelling a song through a megaphone. If they do, they got the idea here first.
