What is it with advertisements that seem to rejoice in the possibility of pulling one over on a company?
Years ago, I wrote about Pizza Hut and IKEA advertisements that featured customers gleefully believing that they had gotten away with paying less than they should have.
In the Pizza Hut ad, a delivery person arrives at the door, delivers three pizzas, and is asked by the customer, “That’s only five bucks each, right?” The delivery person responds, “Yes, sir” and the ad concludes with the customer shouting upstairs, “Honey, the pizza kid made the same mistake again.”
In the IKEA ad, a woman checks out with several bags of goods, looks at her receipt, then quickens her pace and shouts at her partner to “start the car!” four times. The final scene is them driving off and her shouting “Wooooooo!” as they leave the parking lot believing they got more than they should have for the price they paid.
The most recent advertisement is offered up by Hyundai. In a number of variations of the ad, someone drives up and lets someone know they need to lie low because of a deal they got from Hyundai that “is so right, it almost feels wrong.” The next scene typically shows the person being confided in rushing off to a Hyundai dealership to get the same apparently ridiculously good deal and then rushing off. We never actually hear what that great deal is in the ads, but the message seems clear: The customer doesn’t want to get caught because the price can’t possibly be right.
I asked back when I wrote about Pizza Hut and IKEA if such ads send the wrong message, suggesting that it’s OK to shortchange a store when a cashier makes a mistake. “That’s hardly a message that we want to send to our kids, and it’s not one we should embrace ourselves,” I wrote. "As customers we expect stores to correct any mistakes that shortchange us, so by the same token the right thing is to correct a delivery person or cashier on his or her mistake, even if it’s in our favor. It may turn out that there wasn’t a mistake after all, but if you suspect that you’ve been undercharged or that not every item was rung up at checkout, the obligation falls on you to make the situation right.”
I wrote that then, but it hasn’t stemmed the tide of similar advertisements over the years. But wouldn’t it be refreshing for both the customer and the seller to bask in the glory of a good deal? Yes, the seller can confirm, it might seem too good to be true, but that’s our price. The customer might remember being told that if something seems to be too good to be true, it’s usually not, but the seller can reassure him or her that that is indeed the price without any hidden fees or gimmicks.
Imagine how much good faith that could build. A good deal shouldn't leave either side feeling as though someone got away with something. It should leave both sides feeling that they were treated fairly, and that they might want to do business again.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2026 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC
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