Posted on 11/30/2018 7:34:37 AM PST by rickmichaels
Payless Shoesource pranked VIP shoppers into paying markups of up to 1,800 percent for the bargain retailer's shoes as part of a viral advertising campaign designed to shift consumers' perceptions of the brand. Creating a fake luxury brand — Palessi — Payless built a temporary store and filled it with fashionistas.
So-called fashion influencers – essentially trendsetters that regular consumers look to for style cues — paid up to $645 for footwear that usually retails for between $19.99 and $39.99, the company said. The fashion insiders were captured remarking on the quality of the shoes' design and fabrication – before being told who had made them.
"It's just stunning. Elegant, sophisticated," one shopper said of a stiletto heel at the fake store's launch party.
"I can tell it was made with high-quality material," said a man perusing a pair of leather sneakers.
Payless enlisted advertising agency DCX Growth Accelerator to create the fake luxury store — replete with a statue and gold mannequins — and invited 60 influencers, recruited from the street and social media, to the made-up brand's launch party last month in Los Angeles, California.
Shoppers were told they'd receive between $100 and $250 in compensation to attend a market research event at an upscale mall in Santa Monica.
DCX Chief Creative Officer Doug Cameron said he played around with the letters in Payless to produce other store name contenders, including Elypass, which he said sounded like "a hipster store you might find in Brooklyn." Ultimately the agency decided to piggyback off the cachet of Italian design.
"We said let's give the campaign a handle, something creative that will be stickier, that an upscale retailer would really do," Cameron said. "I went on Wikipedia and looked up a list of Italian family names and saw Alessi, and added a 'P' to that. We also created a website around Palessi because we figured people would Google it."
Influencers were stunned upon learning the shoes were from Payless.
"Shut up! Are you serious?!" a shopper exclaims in one of three spots that will air on cable networks through the holiday season.
The shoppers got their money back, but were allowed to keep the shoes.
Sarah Couch, Payless's chief marketing officer, said the campaign aimed to remind shoppers that Payless strikes the right balance of stylistic relevance and affordability.
Cameron said the intention was to bring the brand back to its roots of appealing to the pragmatic American consumer. He said Payless had recently gone off track in an era of "aspiration inflation."
"We interviewed all these consumers who said they loved great styles but resented the elite prices that people would pay for industry fashion brands. We had an interesting opportunity to take a cultural position and said, 'Let's have Payless gently make fun of all of that and go back to this pragmatist position in culture.' That seems to have tapped a nerve."
He said the stunt indicates how powerful branding is in today's society. "The right cultural codes can completely transform the perceived value of just about anything," he said.
My wife is an online clothing retailer and let me tell you exactly how correct you are.
If you pay more than 10 cents for an article of modern clothing you’re a sucker. I’m a sucker. We’re all suckers.
Punked!
A fool and his money...
Great Publicity.
One of the many reasons you should never blindly trust the word of “experts”.
a fool and his money...
“falling apart and stinky”
Yep that’s just when they got good and broke in.
Once while playing street football I made a cut and my foot ripped right through the front of my right shoe....my mom was ticked she had to go buy me a new pair. lol
I have a closet full of Louboutins and Giuseppe Zanotti. Yeah I can’t believe I paid that much for shoes sometimes but they are works of art. Beautiful workmanship. Loubies are handmade. I guarantee I can tell the difference even in sneakers. If you really know high end lines you know Palessi is fake so must have been a bunch of stupid liberals who fall for anything.
“We’re all suckers”
Concur.
Pharma-Bro; aka Martin Shkreli, is infamous for raising the price of an AIDs medication from $13.50 each up to $750. for each pill, and was once known as The Most Hated Man in America.
Pharma-Bro, just like Payless, believes in charging whatever the market will bear. For various financial crimes, plus the crime of (repeatedly!) threatening Mrs. Hillary Clinton on Twitter, Martin is now serving seven years in jail. His lawyers expect an appeal of that sentence.
The lesson I learned in designing apparel and accessories for discount chains is, do not under any circumstance peg the product as having come from that discount chain. It’s OK on the packaging, but not on the product. Customers don’t want anyone to know that they’re wearing cheap stuff. Also, don’t get too out there with the styling or the color, they want what is being worn right now. Merciless knockoffs like the Chinese do are not good either, it’s obvious fakery. You want the look to an extent, you want a product that is at least what little they paid for it, reasonably comfortable and reasonably durable, but it’s the look that they want, for as little as they can get away with paying so long as it’s not such crap that buyer’s remorse sets in too soon. That’s the secret to cheap apparel.
As an example, recently I was engaged in a discussion about the movie “Stink”.
This is a documentary about the chemicals in everything. Well there was some confusion that wasn’t really talked about in the movie.
I have an article of clothing from the 20s. It’s a driving coat. It’s loomed and sewn by machine. it was actually made at the Singer factory in Bridgeport CT.
The fabric is a standard wool / cotton blend. It’s scratchy and stiff, and it’s brilliantly high-quality. I mean, it’s been here since the 20s. I wear it frequently.
New shirts are made so horribly that they begin to unravel the moment they are off the sewing machine. So what was invented was a spray glue that holds the material together.
Without this glue, the shirts wouldn’t even make it to the boxes for shipping. They are all garbage quality that’s held together by this magic spray. It’s “Quality in a can”.
And this spray is _everywhere_. Since no one (really, I mean some do) makes real clothing and textiles this spray is everywhere.
“an upscale mall in Santa Monica.”
There’s your answer.
BTW....Everyone got their money back.
I hear you. I have a friend whose feet are practically square (small exaggeration). He has to buy custom-made shoes. In today's world, cobblers who make shoes from scratch are few and far between.....and very expensive.
Actually not that bad it’s about 2 glasses of wine a day. Plus he did mention he was sharing with friends.
I’ll refrain from sharing my own consumption rates...:)
It also helped them that the made up surname of Palessi kind of sounds like the word ‘Palace’ or Palatial. It sounds like one is referring to something grand.
“I’ll refrain from sharing my own consumption rates”
Ditto
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