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Save Money. Live Better.


On Tuesday I was at Wal-Mart getting supplies for my omnibus art project. While there I kept seeing their slogan conveniently placed around price signs. I saw it by the things that are frequently bought like deodorant, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, Advil, and sunscreen. These common items are located in the center of walkways. Wal-Mart also has lots of commercials on television and ads on YouTube and Facebook, which are also frequented. There slogan is "Save Money. Live Better." By placing their slogan in places that we continually see, they ensured that we would see their slogan, drilling the message into our heads: “If you shop at Wal-Mart you save money, if you save money your life will be better, therefore shopping at Wal-Mart makes your life better.”  Wal-Mart tries to get you to think that through buying from them you will not only save money (because you can save money in lots of places) you do it better while leading a better life.

Although I recognized this use of rhetoric, it was effective. It was still reasonable, however it is very vague. Shopping at Wal-Mart won't make someone live better in the sense that it can't cure their heart condition, it won't bring someone out of depression, and shopping at Wal-Mart won't help me to lead a better spiritual life. The "live better" aspect is very vague, but it is true in the financial sense still. Despite its lack of specification, I doubt that it affects their 160 stores in Pennsylvania, let alone the other 11,293 spread between the other states and 27 countries.

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Comments

  1. UnknownMay 21, 2015 at 4:12 PM

    I agree that their slogan is very vague. I see a lot of store slogans like "If you use our product, your life would be better," but I just pass them by without getting any impression because they don't make sense at all to me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMay 28, 2015 at 12:41 PM

    I never really understood Walmart's slogan either. I'm positive that my life will not be much worse if I buy a product at another store as opposed to Walmart.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Abigail OverbeyJune 1, 2015 at 9:00 AM

    That's a good point. Walmart does tend to make sure you know their slogan, and try to make sure you believe that saving money is all that you need to do to make your life better.

    Kaitlyn

    ReplyDelete
  4. Clay BuxtonJune 10, 2015 at 8:33 AM

    Walmart implies that you live better by having more money, not the bit of life sucked out of you every time you have to go there. It portrays it like the only way to live better is to have money.

    ReplyDelete

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