Bread Winning

Skosky: You wanted to see me, ma'am?

Jess: Stosky come in, take a seat. Can I get you water? Coffee?

S: No thank you.

J: Stosky, do you know why I called you in here?

S: Well the numbers from the baked goods section are out, so I assume it's about that?

J: You are correct in your assumption.  I'll be honest:  The numbers are not very good, and I think I know why.  But before I give my theory, do you have any guesses as to why our store-baked bread loaves did not sell, despite your slogan being stuck on each bag?

S: Well, I heard that the sizes of the initial batches were too large, so many customers wound up picking up loaves that were not fresh, so it tainted the public perception.

J: That may have been the case at one or two stores, but the numbers are abysmal throughout the valley.

S: Do you think it's this new paleo diet?

J: No Stosky, I don't.  I'll cut to the chase, I think the tagline is confusing people.  "So fresh, it is almost as though we baked them here"  Stosky, you came up with the tagline, right?

S: Yes, ma'am.

J: Please, just call me Jess you needn't be so formal.  Stosky, if you were at a supermarket looking for bread and you saw that printed on loaves in a bakery, what would you think?

S: I would think it is a memorable line with a folky, pleasantly sarcastic sense of humor

J: And where would you think the bread was baked?

S: Well I think it's obvious that the bread is baked in our in-store bakery!

J: Is it obvious?

S: I think it is.

J: Stosky, we polled our customers about where they thought the bread was baked, and the results may startle you.  Kelly has the raw data, but in general people just did not understand that the bread was in fact baked in ovens not 30 feet from where they were filling out the form.  Stosky, what was your major in college before you got your MBA?

S: Creative writing.

J: And what was your ambition?

S: Well, at the time I wanted to be an author but, discouraged by the lack of stable income, decided to get my MBA so I could get to use my talent with words to write ad copy and designing marketing campaigns.  I'll have to look at the raw data, do you think more people filled out our polls disproportionately in low-income areas? If we incentivized them with coupons, we may have over represented people who were too under educated to understand the obvious sarcasm.

J: No, we used the same number of forms from each store.  Many of the employees didn't even know, it actually created a bit of confusion. We fired several bakers for missing shifts, and they are suing us because of the confusing wording on the stickers. I thought to myself, "How did such phrasing get a green light? Who was in charge of that?"  Joan, could you send Minton in here?

Minton: You wanted to see me, ma'am? Hey Stosky!

J: Minton, please take a seat.  So you approved of the line "So fresh, it's almost as though we baked them here" for our store-baked bread.

M: I did! It is a delightfully quaint sarcasm.

J: Before you got your MBA, what was your undergrad degree in?

M: English literature.

J: You wanted to be an author?

M: No, I was more practical. I wanted to be an English teacher so I could promote literacy and preserve the sanctity of the English language.

J: And what made you change your mind.

M: Have you ever had to deal with a room full of teenagers?

J: Have you been to one of our board meetings?  (laughter subsides) Seriously though, Minton. I take it you've seen the report-

M: Now before you draw any hasty conclusions, you should know there were stores that baked too many loaves in the first batches that might have tainted public perception because-

J: I am familiar with the tainted public perception theory and I don't think it was a factor.  Have you seen the poll results?

M: Well, have you seen the state of public education out here?

J: Nobody knew that we were baking the bread in-house!  Why was such an unclear slogan promoted?

S: My original copy had a winking emoticon to highlight the sarcasm.

M: Emoticons are not words, don't insult our customers' intelligence!

S: They are a natural evolution of language!

J: Guys, with or without the winkie, the sarcasm is not obvious and the sentence is too long.  There are reports from a few of our stores that a crowd of people is forming near the bakery who are too embarrassed to ask if the bread was baked in-store. It is getting in the way of people trying to place orders, so we are putting up signs to clarify.  These are the indicators of a disastrous campaign.  What do you have to say for yourselves?

S: Wait, you're putting up signs? Don't I get a say in these things?  I wrote that campaign!

M: Yeah, and if we just hand people an explanation we're not encouraging them to think critically. 

J: Guys, we've had this conversation before, haven't we?  Let's look at some other recent campaigns.  Last year there was the campaign to change the word "pumpkin" to "The most ubiquitous autumn squash" that resulted in record low pumpkin sales for us and record high sales for any competitor within half a mile of our stores.  You put the word "partially gelatinous" in our ice cream brand that resulted in the FDA making us change the name due to the volume of calls they received.  What is the pattern that you see in this?

M: People are stupid.

S: Can I work in accounting?