WestJet celebrates Christmas with joyful excess

Call me Scrooge, but this video that is going viral all over Canada doesn't warm my heart quite as much as it should:



Don't get me wrong. I actually really like the WestJet brand. It's an employee-owned airline, and the crews regularly sing, tell jokes, and do other fun things for the passengers. So surprising a flight with Christmas presents on arrival is totally on-strategy. (As is the Santa in their corporate indigo.)

The adman in me appreciates the concept, execution, and pure joy of this stunt. The part that bothers me a bit is the reinforcement of Christmas as a time to ask for — and receive — luxury goods from big box retailers. Yeah, sure, we all do it. But it would have been nice for the airline to give to people who really need things like food, shelter and company this winter. The best part of this promotion was when people wanted plane tickets home for the holidays. Now that's Christmas spirit!

On the lighter side, however, it's interesting to note that not everyone asked for big-ticket items. I wonder if the guy who asked for underpants was kicking himself later...

British retailer de-brands products to provide "quiet" to consumers

Selfridges, a British department store chain, wants to give customers a break from the overwhelming "noise" of the modern world.

According to their "No Noise" campaign site:

As we become increasingly bombarded with information and stimulation, the world is becoming a noisier place. In an initiative that goes beyond retail, we invite you to celebrate the power of quiet, see the beauty in function and find calm among the crowds.

This idea of an oasis of calm in the middle of retail madness is actually as old as the store itself. When Selfridges opened in 1909, Harry Gordon Selfridge created a Silence Room where busy shoppers could "retire from the whirl of bargains and the build up of energy". The store will soon have a new Silence Room, designed by Alex Cochrane:

But the campaign gimmick of most interest to me is "The Quiet Shop," in which iconic products by Heinz, Beats by Dre, Levi's, Marmite and others have provided exclusive "de-branded" products to promote the initiative.

I love it. And it's really impressive that these classic brands — run by marketers who you would expect to be extremely protective of their established standards and equity — would be willing to participate in a project that basically admits our world is over-branded.

Ahhhhhh...

You can buy the limited-edition products online.

Tip via The Drum

No "Black Friday" please, we're Canadian

As a Canadian, I have to live with the knowledge that many of my neighbours to the south believe that I am a wannabe American. I don't actually think this is true or even fair, but it is true that we are absolutely saturated in imported American culture. Which occasionally causes embarrassing culture creep like the example above.

"Black Friday" is the day after American Thanksgiving, and the observed start of the earnest Christmas shopping season south of the border. It is named after the belief that it's the day when retailers go "in the black" for the first time in the calendar year, because that day brings so much instant business.

To make this happen, stores offer incredible discounts on certain in-demand products in limited quantities. Which causes customers to line up hours in advance for "door-crasher" promotions, and stampede into the stores causing mayhem and injuries. And as stores try to one-up each other for the business, "Black Friday" has turned into "Black Thursday After Thanksgiving Dinner" for many unfortunate, un-unionzed retail employees.

Not only is the third Friday in November meaningless on the Canadian calendar, it's an ugly symbol of selfish consumerism trumping human decency. But worst of all, it's as "wannabe American" as you can get.

When I brought this topic up on Facebook, a friend and reader pointed out that Canadian businesses are mimicking American cousins to try to stem the flow of one-way cross-border shopping that happens every November. And these promotions really do increase sales for a day.

But I still don't like it. Our Thanksgiving was last month, and the start of our Christmas shopping season was last week (after Remembrance Day). If Canadian retailers want to fight back against the lure of the south on one day a year, why not do so in a uniquely Canadian way? Make the third Friday in November "Buy Canadian Day" and offer the same sales with a smirk and an "eh?," eh?

I just hope we can do better than this.

Bridezilla Yourself

Everyone knows what modern marriage is all about — conspicuous consumption! At least that's the way Brides Magazine sees it. And they've created a new interactive web property, "Stoned and Dangerous" to let everyone experience the fun of spending like a bridezilla.

The first thing the app asks is to choose a photo.

Photo by Robert Wilson

Now, I'm no blushing bride, but with a little help from the late Michael Hutchence (as seen in the Sleeveface book) I can at least be 50% prettier.

Now it's time to SPEND! SPEND! SPEND! You get to choose from a variety of dresses, locations, cars, refreshments, even consumer electronics (???) as your extravagance is tracked as a percentage of what an average bride spends. (I have no idea what they're calculating.)

In the end, you are asked to choose a bridesmaid and share with your friends. I don't think I'll do that, though. I've so far avoided having to untag any pictures of myself, drunk and in drag, from Facebook.

So far, anyway...

So what's the point? To sell magazines, clearly, and to hype their advertisers' product categories. (I still can't figure out why the iPhone was in there otherwise.)

But do we really need to encourage more of this behaviour? We have reached a point at which, even in the face of recession, North Americans are spending money they don't have on stuff they don't need. And while it may buoy our retail and service economy over the short term, we are starting to see the terrible impacts of our unsustainable appetites for consumption — in terms of human rights and environmental catastrophes in the developing world, and in the loss of local entrepreneurship and culture at home.

In my opinion, today's bride needs to be less "Stoned and Dangerous", and instead watch The Story of Stuff.