Dear Tesco. (I imagine you read this blog.) I recently enjoyed this sign in one of your excellent shops, but I just wondered if you could explain to me what these twelve words actually mean? When you say 'Our Fruit and Veg Pledge', it's very stirring, but it does rather raise the expectation that you're about to make some sort of, well, pledge, perhaps relating to your fruit and veg. Something about the freshness, maybe, or the extent to which they're locally sourced, or, if you like, a pledge only to sell fruit and veg that if hollowed out could house an average sized muskrat, but something. Instead, you have 'Helping you get your 5 a day'. How? What are you pledging to do to help me get that? Give me my first five pieces of fruit free? Refuse to sell me cakes and ale unless I also buy fruit and veg? No. What you mean by 'Helping you get your 5 a day' is 'Prepared to sell you fruit and veg'. Which I sort of suspected, Tesco, because you are a grocery.
So, can I suggest you don't really need 'Helping you get your 5 a day' on that sign, and you certainly don't need 'Our' or 'pledge'. All you really need is 'Fruit & Veg'. And even then, since the sign is above an enormous display of fruit and veg, we could perhaps take the signified for the signifier, and drop those words as well. Which just leaves us with the four wispy dancing stick people. You should definitely keep them. They're beautiful.
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5 comments:
To be fair, I think their 'fruit and veg pledge' is something about having at least 5 fruit and veg on a 'half-price' offer every week.
Bloody stupid nonetheless, to suggest that there is a given fixed price for strawberries, say, and that Tesco is generously halving it for a limited period, rather than strawberries being, you know, SEASONAL, and therefore cheaper at some times of year than others in any case.
Anyway. Hugely pleased I found your blog. Saw Roger Allam as Falstaff at the Globe at the weekend which prompted some fond Cabin-Pressure-related surfing which landed me here.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you very much! Both for your kind words, and also for the information that Roger is playing Falstaff at the Globe. I must certainly see that.
What I really want to know is the hidden meaning behind the wispy dancing stick people? They look an awful lot like the dancing men from Sherlock Holmes.
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Perhaps it's a subliminal message that urges us to buy a specific four-letter fruit or vegetable. Lime? Bean? Corn? Although corn is technically a grain.
I haven't commented before (and I live in the U.S. and have nothing to do with you), but I thought I ought to say that this is yet another post that made me fall over laughing. Literally. Oh, and Cabin Pressure is utterly amazing. Thanks for making the world a much funnier place.
From guessing its part of the fresh fruit and veg everyday to help with your 5 a day.
I noticed for £3 I could get my 5 a day with the loads Fruit and Veg offers that tesco have.
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