If you are lucky enough to have a Grandy’s in your part of the world, you are lucky indeed. Nothing too fancy, just good sit down food at affordable prices. To be clear, I like Grandy’s.
Today at lunch I saw a display for collectible Coca–Cola cups on the counter-top, selling for $2.29.
I do not know if these cups came from Grandy’s or Coca-Cola, neither did the staff, but what were they thinking?
My issue? Look at this display. If you were to look at this display and go no further, doesn’t this look like you are buying a reusable cup? Don’t you think the word ‘collect’ might imply slightly that this is a reusable cup? I don’t think that is too much of a leap to make for the general public.
Well the cup is not reusable – of course it is reusable in practice and will likely be used again and again by those purchasing this $2.29 cup – my point is this cup is a number 5 plastic, and indeed printed on the bottom with the words “one time use”.
My point is this cup is not designed to be reusable and indeed it is likely a bad idea to reuse this cup. But there it is looking a lot like a reusable unit ready to enter cup holders of cars in Texas for the rest of the hot, hot Fall. Honestly I don’t think they meant any harm. They added a warning lable such as it is and nowhere is the claim made that this is meant to be a reusable item. I mainly think, they just didn’t think.
The truly irksome fact for someone seeing this and being in the promo business is that I have a vague idea on how much these units cost Grandy’s / Coca-Cola, and for a similar price I am relatively sure they could have produced a truly reusable container for their collectible.
A truly reusable cup could have been a very cool customer loyality item to drive repeat business, free refills, that sort of thing. Instead this is a one time use $2.29 piece of plastic, at best designed to sit on the mantel, or more likely headed to the trash can.
Really, what where they thinking?
Adventures in Green Marketing 
Leave a Reply