A reader over at Best Week Ever spotted this little makeshift “tribute” to recently deceased actor Heath Ledger in a San Diego Best Buy.
Mr. Ledger passed away yesterday at his home in New York. He was 28.
Too soon, Best Buy?
When Is a Makeshift Best Buy Tribute to Heath Ledger Too Soon? The Answer: Always. [Best Week Ever] (Thanks, Phil!)
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@renegadebarista:
I, too, worked at Hastings as a video manager at the same time you did. And I put together a Douglas Adams endcap, too. And then I worked for *bux. Are you sure you’re not me?!?
Keith Olbermann featured this on Countdown tonight and castigated the store for their crassness. I thought he was totally wrong — anybody working in retail knows that when anything major happens to someone famous, anything they’ve produced runs out the door. This is just making everybody’s life easier, both staff and customers, by helping people find the movies they’re interested in.
As for Ledger’s work being famous enough to not need the help, I read a story earlier today saying that one of the more popular search terms since yesterday is KEITH Ledger. So not everybody knows him and his work well enough to not need some help.
I thought the sign was just fine. Quickly made, yes, but worded nicely enough to not seem exploitive. You know THAT didn’t come from corporate.
Ummm…
I would bet fifty bucks that this was a store employee legitimately trying to honor Heath Ledger and not a corporate-sponsored attempt at cashing in on his death.
P.S. I am really sad about this. I liked A Knight’s Tale, and I was really looking forward to his role as The Joker.
I’ve struggled with posting this comment because I know I’m going to get nailed for it. I find it slightly hypocritical that the consumerist and Ms. Marco went after Best Buy for this when Gawker Media, via gawker.com, has rated right up their with sites like TMZ for trying to cash in on this via site hits. Remember the more site hits gawker gets the more money Gawker Media makes and gawker.com has exploited this just as much as TMZ or any of the other gossip sites. Plus gawker is not a news site, it is simply a gossip site. Their own tagline even says it:
MEDIA GOSSIP AND POP CULTURE ROUND THE CLOCK.
My point with all this is, is that if you believe that Best Buy is trying to cash in, which I don’t believe they are, then shouldn’t you be upset with Gawker Media as well. Heath Ledger is one of their featured story topic links right now, how is this any different from what Best Buy is doing?
The local CompUSA has just stopped playing “A Knight’s Tale”, but only because they sold the TVs they were showing it on.
It’s been a few days since I’ve seen another best buy situation.
Best buy would sell out their own mothers to push a product, they’re disgusting.
What the company was thinking: “Someone died, come on people, time is money!”
Scummy retail shops like BB and CompUsa lose revenue because they do stuff like this. If people would learn some discipline, the same thing would happen to the fast food industry and we’d see nothing but healthy fast food within a month.
@riverstyxxx: If people would learn some discipline lots and lots of good things would happen, healthy fast food would certainly not be #1 on that list.
Also, I am pissed to be too late to jump on the “BB sucks” train in this thread.
To be honest, most of the stuff that “Best Buy” does appalls me. However, this is simple economics. Supply and Demand. I worked at a video rental store years ago (not a chain, privately owned little ma and pa store) and would always almost immediately put a shelf together for whomever was the most recent big celebrity that had died. When someone major dies, there is always an almost immediate influx of the “vulture” customers who walk in and must have/see the deceased’s body of work.
I now work at a major chain CD/DVD store. I, again, almost immediately grabbed all of Heath Ledger’s movies and put them up near the registers to serve as impulse items. This did serve us well the other day since we sold some used DVDs and some cheaper titles (Brokeback Mountain was actually on sale right now and 10 Things I Hate About You was on sale WITH a mail-in rebate…both entirely coincidentally). I was shocked to hear that this young man died (simply because he was so young and we haven’t really heard anything about him in tabloids…it wouldn’t have shocked ANYONE if the person was Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse since their drug abuse has been so public), but I’ve been in the business long enough to know that many people will come in seeking these films out simply BECAUSE he died. Now, it’s as simple as stepping up to the register (which is right up near the front door and hard to miss).
Don’t hate me for simply providing service for my customers, which this boils down to.
I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist but do you think Best Buy had something to do with his death? Perhaps we should investigate when this sign was actually printed? All I’m saying………
@renegadebarista:
Amen.
@BFIrrera: “simple economics: supply and demand” or “economics 101: supply and demand” posts FTW!!! next up: “simple life: don’t drive drunk”.
I’m more upset by the cheapness of the display, than by the concept.
When Brando died, I wanted to show my son some of his movies and found it was handy to have them in one spot. This makes for good customer service.
It is unlikely that this is making anyone appear at the store, it’s not like they advertised outside the store, they simply made a small display to gather movies by a reasonable purpose.
They probably sold fewer movies than if they were on the shelves mixed with everything else, because the people there to buy one or two of Ledger’s movies would not be tempted by the other movies sitting next to them target on the shelf.
Best Buy still sucks, but I see nothing wrong with this.
@smartwatermelon: If you really wanted to pay tribute to Reagan, when customers asked you where the Reagan books were you should have responded, “I don’t recall.”
Too soon?
BEST BUY SUCKETH
It probably would have been less tacky without the sign. I imagine there will be lots of customers coming in for Heath Ledger movies (I know I starting thinking, “Did I ever see The Patriot? Do I want to see Knight’s Tale again?”), and I think customers will appreciate having the works collected in one place, and it’ll make it easy for employees to direct them to the comprehensive filmography without dragging them all over the store.
But the sign that makes it BLATANT advertising should probably wait a few days.
@lookatmissohio: Exactly, I was working at Borders when Lloyd Alexander died and the first thing I did was set up a display. Then I spent the rest of the day directing people to his books because I honestly felt that more people should read his stuff, it’s all brilliant.
It’s entirely likely this was a fan who didn’t realize that people would take it the wrong way. Plus, I completely agree that it also could have been somebody saying, “Please, stop asking where they are. They’re all here, take as many as you want and get out of the store.”
It’s a sad fact that death means dollars when it’s a celebrity.
@renegadebarista: Apples to Oranges. One is a “media” providing news on events.
Should a newspaper not publish anything on this because they might sell more papers? Or network television news ignore it because it might spike viewership?
The only thing this little sign in the Best Buy intended was to drive up sales. If they wanted a tribute to him why not offer 20% of the sales to a charitable organization, say like….”Save the Koala Bears”
@DrGirlfriend: “I understand the idea of grouping the items for those who decide to become a fan of someone once they die. I thin kwhat bothers me about this particular instance is that it looks really hastily done and kind of crass. If an endcap had just been filled with his movies or something, then fine. But that little sign is in bad taste. Could have been done in a more discreet fashion, I think.”
I agree with this completely. I’m amazed that Best Buy doesn’t have a sign template and some type of high quality printer around. Borders has a stack of blank signs and a nice printer, plus a computer template to get the font correct and matching. The signs they use for author deaths are basically
Name
Birth year-Death year
That seems a lot more tactful.
@topgun:
Gawker.com is a gossip site, not a news site. One of its main features is having people e-mail where celebs are so that others in NYC can go and get pics, etc. Galker even by its own admission is not a news site. It is a site designed to profit off of gossip, (unproven rumors) about celebs. Comparing gawker.com to a news outlet is like comparing TMZ to the Wall Street Journal.
Pulling a collection of Mr. Ledger’s movies together isn’t so bad. The sign does seem tacky. Plus — as Keith Olbermann pointed out — this was set up within about an hour of the death being reported. Ghoulish at the very least.
But the worst person in the world on the show that night was John Gibson, who was making jokes about Ledger’s death that same night. Something about it was funny that he was dead because he played teh ghey in Brokeback. Stay classy, Gibby.