I recently came across the best tagline EVER. A sign above a shoe store in downtown Manhattan reads, “Probably the Lowest Prices In the City.”
You can't make this stuff up. Right in the heart of the financial district- home to economic policy and power - is retail advertising that lacks both conviction and conclusion. Sound familiar?
The slogan of a tiny shoe store belies a fundamental change to the nation's capitalism: we’ve replaced laissez faire with lazy fare. We've given up not only on research and fact finding but also price adjustment.
We are a tired nation, nursing our hangover from the eighties. And we’ve lost our will to fight. It’s easier to use hesitant hyperbole than to find out what the competition is doing, or to actually do anything about it.
I blame Twitter.
Waffling is, and will always be, a great American tradition. Indeed, it is cornerstone of our democracy. And the perfect rhetoric for a retailer on Wall Street.
