Ralph's, what are you trying to say?

According to stickers plastered all over food products at my local grocery, Great Meals Start At Ralph's.














Over capitalization aside, I can see their point.

While bright orange circles with crap grammar are not my particular cup of marketing tea, I appreciate the inexpensive and eye catching style that Ralph's has chosen to use to appeal to the everyman that shops there. Great Meals Start At Ralph's. It makes sense, purchase ingredients there, use them to make a great meal. Be it the beginning to a simple picnic or a fairly complex holiday meal, it can all be purchased from Ralph's, cause Great Meals Start There.

I get marketing, I really do. I love marketing. I am a complete packaging whore and will buy pretty much anything in a purple bottle, box or can. I love when companies re-brand themselves. I love to look at the styles of print and colors and try to figure out who they are, or are attempting to, sell to and what image they are trying to put forth.


Sadly sometimes marketing confuses me. I am not stupid but sometimes the marketing simply doesn't fit the product. But haven't we all seen commercials that don't make sens,? ones that may be mildly entertaining but have nothing at all to do with what they are trying to sell? I read in a business journal once that this was a recent rend in marketing; attempting to market products with a weird ad just to confuse the consumer. The thinking behind this was that if a person was confused about an ad they saw, at least they would be thinking about it, or even better, discussing it with someone.

While its possible that some test audiences were polled and a very expensive marketing account was involved with those Orange Stickers, I don't think they were exactly clear to their store lackeys as to where to put the stickers exactly.

Recently my roomie went to Ralph's to pick up on some staples. He inadvertently brought home The Magic Marketing Sticker:













On the toilet paper.

Pardon me, but I don't like to think about what goes into my Great Meals when I am using my Quilted Northern. And really I don't think the marketing team behind the Ralph's grocery stores really wanted those things associated in my head either.
Great Meals Start At Ralph's and apparently somebody at Ralph's wants us to know that Ralph's is there for us when our Great Meals come to their Very End too.