This Blog Post: Much More Than a Blog Post

I don't think I understand why people do this.



For the benefit of anyone who may have trouble reading the sign -- and, to be fair, in real life it's a little bigger -- the highest signboard on this tower reads:

"THE BREAD STORE®
MUCH MORE THAN A BREAD STORE!"

What? No. That is not how that works in the slightest. Something has gone wrong here.

Yes, I know, some stores out there make a point of building a caveat right into their signage; I'm sure we're all familiar with "The Dollar Store With More!", for example, where the "with more" is actually what you're paying because most of the crap in the place is priced over a dollar for no good god damn reason. But this, this is a stretch even beyond the already distended borders of the concept.

"The Bread Store: much more than a bread store". Okay. Follow me on this one and see if what I am saying makes sense. If you have a store, and you would describe it in one sentence as being 'more than a bread store' -- are you still with me here? -- I would think that, in this particular circumstance, it would be reasonable to conclude that you don't name it "The Bread Store"! No! Stop that!

I can understand, given the limited amount of space on a retail sign, that it could be difficult to convey the store's concept of 'bread and stuff' succinctly. (Let's assume for the moment that "Bread and Stuff" is already taken.) "Get Baked" wouldn't really focus enough on the 'bread' part; "Loaves Around" wouldn't really focus enough on the 'stuff' part. "The Bread Store With More", besides being a possible trademark violation, would make me want to hit you. "Bread & Circuses" is cute, but runs the very real risk of flying over the heads of your audience (a feeling I'm quite accustomed to, so I know what I'm talking about here) -- and it would shut out any potential future expansion into Winnipeg, where the name is already taken. I got a strange hometown, man.

Anyway! All I'm suggesting here is that you could have given this a little more thought, because it seems entirely counterproductive to cultivate a public image that stops and contradicts itself before anyone can even get through the door. It's like when a pizza place puts out an advertising campaign for their chicken wings that never once mentions the pizza they sell. As first impressions go, "what were they thinking" is probably a bad start for luring in customers.

This post was originally going to have a lot more content in it, but now I'll have to put up the rest of it tomorrow because I have a headache about the whole thing. Thanks a lot, The Bread Store Much More Than A Bread Store. Now I've got to go lie down.