Underhand Marketing Tactics 4

Mothercare again, and they're becoming such frequent offenders with the bastardliness of their ads that I'm giving them their own tag.

As you've probably gathered by now, I don't like being advertised to without consent. I particularly hate ad campaigns that are designed to ensure that the relevant brand logo is right in my face when I'm thinking about a particular subject.

It's unsolicited anchoring in my view, and I really think that there should be greater concern about it, ethically speaking.

So you can imgaine my utter delight when I bought my little boy some Mothercare own brand pyjamas the other day and found that a major brand of fabric conditioner had hijacked the washing labels:

I've got to hand it to them for this stroke of creative genius, even though it made me swear in a very inventive way. What you can't see so well in the photo is the little ad card attached to every single pair that had to be cut off and binned as well, oh, I was just loving them by that point.

Fabric conditioner doesn't feature on my shopping lists these days, so thankfully, I'm immune to this particular piece of manipulative nonsense. However, before I cottoned on to the wonders of eco and dryer balls, this brand had already made me their bitch.

I feel used. And not in the way that I like.

Incidentally, I also got suckered on the same shopping trip by my little boy hanging out of the trolley and sobbing for a particular toy. I'd been meaning to get one anyway, and didn't fancy making a return trip just for the sake of standing my ground, so I gave in. The time has come to leave him at home, or there will be no money left over for buying gin!