Parking mad
I was in a shop yesterday and heard an advert on the radio for a local shopping centre that left me standing open-mouthed and dumbstruck. It offered parking at half price on Sundays plus a free environmentally-friendly hessian shopping bag.
My mind started racing thinking of the stupidity of an ad agency who came up with a giveaway that had a moral message directly opposed to the thing they were connecting it with. And to do
it in such a blatant and idiotic way. And it’s not as if it’s impossible to reconcile the problem of how to put a green sheen on a businesses’ intrinsic un-greeness. Airport websites deal with offsetting greenhouse gas emissions. They don’t shy away from it, or disconnect it from their business, but they don’t deliberately ask people to draw a line between the two things either.
The advert on the radio concluded with a line something like “…so you can save the planet when you park and shop at the Podium!” just in case there were still some people who hadn’t managed to link the two things in their minds by that point. Drive to the shopping centre – get a re-usable shopping bag! It must of been at that point that I fainted.
