ninme

I’m having all my prejudices about marketing people reinforced this week. It’s lovely when my prejudices are reinforced. So I especially enjoyed this snippet:

The Times - Tesco in the US ? It’ll never work, by Chris Ayres

Now, to me, the idea of the British selling ready-meals to Californians makes as much sense as the Iranians selling Second World War text books to the Israelis. There’s a culture problem. A big one. I get the feeling that Sir Terry already knows this: nothing else could explain the almost military secrecy that has surrounded the Fresh & Easy project since its inception. You would think they were developing a tactical nuclear weapon, not a selection of microwavable dinners.

You can’t fault Tesco for not doing its homework, though. Executives from the company spent a fortnight living with 60 American families and studying their pantries. They even set up a fake trial store in an LA warehouse, and passed it off as a film set to anyone who asked.

Which makes Fresh & Easy’s debut “dinner made easy” promotion all the more inexplicable. This is what they are offering: “A 25oz beef lasagna, Caesar salad, ciabatta loaf, and bottle of wine, all for under $12.” Yes, Sir Terry is trying to sell the residents of the most diet-fixated, calorie-paranoid, carbohydrate-obsessed city on Earth a combination of red meat, pasta, bread, cheese and booze. A round of applause, please, for the Fresh & Easy marketing department. Incidentally, if someone offered you a beef lasagna and bread at an LA dinner party, you’d sue them. A three-cheese lentil and tofu lasagna you might get away with — but you’d still be unpopular.

Now, if I could get my hands on the Waitrose curry meals, man. I’d die of happiness. Now, there’s no sign that will ever happen and if it did, they wouldn’t serve the curry meals because Americans wouldn’t want them, and even if they did, they wouldn’t open up here because this is Seattle. Ah, marketing.