Wal-Mart posts year-to-date savings online — updated every second!
Posted by: admin in Marketing and AdvertisingFiled under: Wal-Mart (WMT), Marketing and advertising
When it comes to Wal-Mart’s (NYSE: WMT) impact, I’m ambivalent. In some ways it’s good, in some ways it’s bad and, on balance, it’s hard to state. I think that’s the most rational position to hold on something as complex as this company.
Well aware that its increasing size has brought increased controversy, Wal-Mart has launched a number of initiatives designed to convince you that it’s really, really good for the world. While a lot of it brings up valid points, a lot of it is propaganda that would make Lenin proud.
Take this one for example. If you go to http://www.savemoneylivebetter.com/, a site run by Wal-Mart, there’s a little counter at the bottom that “represents the amount of money Wal-Mart has saved American families since January 1st, 2008.” As I write this, it’s at a tiny over $123 billion, but it adds another million every 30 seconds or so.
How Wal-Mart is saving American families $2 million per minute at 4:00 AM ET is a little bit beyond me but hey, this is advertising. Back in March, I wrote about Wal-Mart’s claim it saves the average family $2500 per year: “the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus is set to release its finding that the claim is misleading, promoting a statistic “for which the advertiser provided no support and, in fact, conceded that there was none.”
On the SaveMoney site, Wal-Mart provides the name of a study it clams supports the statistic, but provides no link to its contents or methodology. I wonder what the Council of Superior Business Bureaus would have to say about that.
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