It must be the warm weather getting everyone so hot under the collar.
In the papers it’s as if the silly season has started a couple of months early, with a bunch of dozy stories surfacing in the past few days that you’d normally expect to see only in high summer.
Marks & Spencer has certainly been feeling the prickly heat, getting right riled up over a less than incendiary bit of piggybacking… by Ann Summers. The high street purveyor of bedroom amusements is not usually known for the subtlety of its advertising (or the sophistication of its products, which are definitely more Jordan than Keira Knightley).
But its cunning ruse was still too elaborate for M&S, which has blundered into a giant elephant trap despite all the fairy lights and strategically positioned tinsel tassels around it. In response to the so-called Squeal Deal, M&S effectively told its mum and called the lawyers in.
Ann Summers has dropped the campaign, but the job is already done thanks to the great swathes of predictably eager media coverage, (Sample headline: ‘Why M&S has got its knickers in a twist with Ann Summers’.)
Barring a whopping lawsuit, which is surely unlikely to proceed far, it’s the best possible outcome for the chain.
Bear in mind that many shoppers on the street deliberately look the other way when passing Ann Summers to avoid giving the impression they’re perving at plastic dummies in cheap lingerie (that’s not another Jordan reference, by the way). So how many would have been aware of the stunt in the first place?
Perhaps M&S is in on the act and reckons it’ll sell extra Easter grub from the publicity – although it doesn’t sound like it, judging by the wounded tone of its spokespeople.
Defending your brand from potentially damaging associations is a serious issue – witness Unilever acting swiftly when the BNP latched on to Marmite. But if M&S really didn’t want to be associated with a silly but harmless campaign to flog lubricant and the like, a dignified silence might have served it better this time.
Talking of dignified silences, The Grocer does not publish an issue this weekend due to what Ann Summers hilariously dubbed the “bonk holiday”. Daily Bread will be back on Tuesday. Happy Easter everybody.
More slices of Daily Bread
In the papers it’s as if the silly season has started a couple of months early, with a bunch of dozy stories surfacing in the past few days that you’d normally expect to see only in high summer.
Marks & Spencer has certainly been feeling the prickly heat, getting right riled up over a less than incendiary bit of piggybacking… by Ann Summers. The high street purveyor of bedroom amusements is not usually known for the subtlety of its advertising (or the sophistication of its products, which are definitely more Jordan than Keira Knightley).
But its cunning ruse was still too elaborate for M&S, which has blundered into a giant elephant trap despite all the fairy lights and strategically positioned tinsel tassels around it. In response to the so-called Squeal Deal, M&S effectively told its mum and called the lawyers in.
Ann Summers has dropped the campaign, but the job is already done thanks to the great swathes of predictably eager media coverage, (Sample headline: ‘Why M&S has got its knickers in a twist with Ann Summers’.)
Barring a whopping lawsuit, which is surely unlikely to proceed far, it’s the best possible outcome for the chain.
Bear in mind that many shoppers on the street deliberately look the other way when passing Ann Summers to avoid giving the impression they’re perving at plastic dummies in cheap lingerie (that’s not another Jordan reference, by the way). So how many would have been aware of the stunt in the first place?
Perhaps M&S is in on the act and reckons it’ll sell extra Easter grub from the publicity – although it doesn’t sound like it, judging by the wounded tone of its spokespeople.
Defending your brand from potentially damaging associations is a serious issue – witness Unilever acting swiftly when the BNP latched on to Marmite. But if M&S really didn’t want to be associated with a silly but harmless campaign to flog lubricant and the like, a dignified silence might have served it better this time.
Talking of dignified silences, The Grocer does not publish an issue this weekend due to what Ann Summers hilariously dubbed the “bonk holiday”. Daily Bread will be back on Tuesday. Happy Easter everybody.
More slices of Daily Bread
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