What's Being Advertised in the Metro This Week

Time for a new segment called: what's being advertised in the metro this week.

Apparently, Paris advertisers are now advertising the unadvertisable. Ads in the metro this week promote the convenience of ordering things online and then rather than having them delivered to your home, you get to go pick them up at the store. In a breathtaking customer service breakthrough, your purchases will be ready in the store for you to come get them only an hour after you buy them online. Talk about efficient.

This raises the question, why not just go to the store and buy it there immediately? But going to shops and actually shopping there is so 2008. And what, do you expect all stores to stock products you might want to buy all the time? Au contraire. Commercial retail space is très cher in the city of light.

The internet is also here for our convenience, hashtag obviously#. In previous online retail, you recieved your order in the mail at home.  But having it delivered to your home took so long, like an entire day. This is the online retail of the future. This way you get your product so much faster, in only an hour, at the store-- where you didn't go in the first place to buy what you wanted immediately.

French shopping has clearly reached dizzying new heights of consumer convenience. Oh la la, the French are simply souffrants from the vertige. The rest of the world often criticises France as not having an entrepreneurial spirit but this is inaccurate. Not only have they got one, but it is probably at the Darty store waiting for them to pick it up after ordering it online an hour ago.

So how do advertisers try to make what is in reality a useless and unnecessary step in your shopping experience sound appealing?

How they always do: they use sex. If you have a young coltish half-naked boy toy ready to do your bidding, send him down to pick up your online order. The ad says, She shops online, he goes to the store to pick up my order. Why stop there? Why not send your strapping young Adonis on other pointless errands, like to buy stamps for your email envelopes at the post office?






So now, it is clear. The sheer logic and convenience-defying nature of online retail that requires going to a real shop is the entire point and was in fact designed for sexual roleplaying power games. It is intended to help women assert their dominance over their teenage boyfriends (I'm not sure why anyone would use this service otherwise.) The product is punishment, à la 50 Shades of Grey applied to consumer goods.

I think more advertisers should use this product-as-punishment strategy. For example, to promote the new Thor movie-- you wanted something with clever dialogue and a compelling storyline? Behave better next time, naughty vixen! Or a high-heeled dominatrix saying, you eat revolting greasy chemical junk food from Burger King if I say you eat revolting greasy chemical junk food from Burger King. Perhaps focusing on how your product can be used as an instrument of torture (even in a sexy way) is about as close to truth in advertising as we'll ever get.