Reader Richie would like to point out the impressive pointlessness of this Wal-Mart promotion for “Genuine SteakHouse Steak.”
So the brand name is “Genuine Steakhouse,” therefore they are Genuine Steakhouse Steaks. This does not mean anything. They are not “genuine” anything, nor are they coming from a “steakhouse,” except for, I guess the slaughterhouse, which is a house where steaks come from. The next sentence, “100% freshness guaranteed or your money back” is also pretty lean on meaning. One would hope that spoiled, past-due meat would not be sold in the first place and I think it’s safe to say that, should that meat accidentally get sold, it would certainly be accepted for a refund. Then again, I don’t know much about Wal-Mart, so maybe they are always selling rotten meat and not giving you money back for it. Who’s to say.
What they have cleverly done here is put a bunch of connotation-rich words near each other, in a construction that prevents the words from having any kind of actual meaning that might make it incumbent upon the company to provide anything even slightly out of the ordinary. Genuine Steakhouse…100% guaranteed…money back. A casual gloss could easily give you the false impression that they are somehow guaranteeing that this meat has a certain level of quality, or comes from a specific steakhouse, or something like that. In fact, they are just announcing the fact that they are putting a trademarked brand name on run-of-the-mill USDA-whatever meat, and then guaranteeing that they won’t sell it once it putrefies.
Oh, Richie, this is what happens when you think about Wal-Mart too much. It’s bad for your health. Speaking of bad for your health, if you click on over to the SteakHouse Steaks page at Walmart.com, you’ll see that concerning the “100% guaranteed fresh” bit…“*Restrictions apply. Please see store for details.”
Eek.
Meaningless, You Mean It’s All Been Meaningless [I Feel Crazy]
Wal-Mart Steaks
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blah blah blah…why would anybody shop at Wal-Mart?
blah blah blah.
Sorry, had to get the obligatory phrase out of the way.
Isn’t this really what all advertisements do?
@Terd_Ferguson: Seconded.
oh noes – someone named a brand a certain way in order to make it sound appealing!!!
Publix has house brands slightly better than their cheapest stuff called “private selection”, you mean to tell me that they are neither specially selected nor private?
Kind of reminds me of Elf’s “best cup of coffee in the world!” gag – anyone with half a brain can see the difference between a genuine claim and BS branding/marketing…
I don’t mean to sound harsh, but this is new how?
Advertisers, and stores have been doing this for years.
Puffery!
See, I remembered something from school.
Who wants fresh meat anyway. The good stuff is corn fed and Aged something like 28 days.
Though I am brought to mind of an old satirical Grocery store Flyer from National lampoon that claimed to have “Sun Drenched Beef”
It’s a BRAND NAME. Who cares? My Keebler E.L. Fudge Cookies aren’t made by real elves either. I also saw a girl working at Pep Boys who had very little pep in her step. I had some trouble finding circuits at Circuit City so I went to Best Buy instead. But they weren’t the best buy because Radio Shack sold them for less. But they didn’t have radios and it didn’t look like much of a shack, to be honest.
So their brand name is Genuine Steakhouse. What’s wrong with that?
maybe it’s like…bologna steaks
Um, so what restrictions apply? I have to know!
@ thesabre: Nobody said there was anything wrong with it. They only said the guarentee was a buch of BS. Wow, way to miss the point.
The Wal-mart in my town actually has really good cuts of meat. It’s kinda an agreed opinion from everyone who lives here that there’s really only one or two more places in town that have better cuts, and of course higher prices. The town I live in is pretty big also. probably at least 50 different places to buy meat from. All the way from meat markets, to grocery stores.
@muffinpan: Why is the guarantee a bunch of BS. I bet if I brought back the steak and said it wasn’t full of freshness, they’d let me exchange it or give me my money back.
@thesabre: “My Keebler E.L. Fudge Cookies aren’t made by real elves either.”
What?!? Since when? Did they outsource them to the dirty leprechauns?
It’s called “genuine steakhouse” because it’s injected with a solution of up to 15% “steakhouse goodness”
Slow complaint day at Gawker, eh?
@ testicles: You too. Oh man. look it’s a bunch of BS words strung together. If the guarentee wasn’t there they would still take it back. Ya see now.
Oy Vey when will it end.
@muffinpan: Then it’s redundant, not a bunch of BS. There’s a difference.
I am quite sure there are worse consumer issues out there to worry about.
I don’t understand what is 100% freshness if you’re not biting into a live cow.
This reminds me of the latest Pizza Hut campaign. Has anyone seen the commercials for Pizza Hut’s new pasta trays? They actually advertise them as “restaurant quality”.
Um. Hey Pizza Hut…aren’t you a restaurant? I guess what you are really trying to say is, “Please try the pasta. It will exceed your justifiably low expectations!”
Cracks me up everytime I see one of those commercials.
@testicles: Ok, it’s redundant BS, But BS just the same.
Ya know, I think I’m going to go to wal-mart today and buy one of these things with my bank of america card. First I have to go shopping for car before I eat. I wonder if I can get my car loan as an ARM?
@Wormfather: I know, I know, as soon as I hit the submit button, I realized I was doing it wrong.
It’s like the fat free vegetables I bought someday.
I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull’s ass, but I’d rather take a butcher’s word for it.
Sorry….couldn’t help myself!
@MissPeacock: I don’t think so. I do think this crosses a line between marketing spin and pure BS.
The Princeton philosopher HG Frankfurt wrote a somewhat famous book recently called “On Bullshit” where he described the differences between lies, spin, and BS. His position is that BS is worse than a lie, because liars care whether they’re lying, whereas BSers don’t care.
What Walmart is doing is taking pure nothingness – words without meaning, and the OP wisely detected – and trying to make money off it. It’s pure BS. It doesn’t even rise to the level of a lie. Walmart’s “guarantee” has nothing to do with freshness (it’s already against regulations and common sense to sell rotten meat) or steakhouses, and the guarantee only says that faulty products may be returned, which is already the case. So it means absolutely nothing. Pure BS. Good call.
Being in advertising myself, I can’t really see anything wrong with this. This is how it’s done, pretty much for any company or product. You wouldn’t call your meat company “Rancid Cuts O’ E-Coli” would you? Of course not.
This hasn’t been going on for years, it’s been going on since the birth of advertising, whenever that was. Somewhere way back when, a caveman was probably trading a rock for a dead bird and said, “Ugh… good rock for bashing rhino skull. Much edge sharpness. You take now or I kill you with it.” while showing him the cave wall schematic carving of the rock’s properties. And advertising was born. (that’s really more of a high-pressure sales pitch, but you get the idea.)
They advertise alcohol ALWAYS as being the fun, awesome life you “deserve”, but never show homeless alcoholics puking in the gutter. Because that probably isn’t the image that will get you to buy.
Any product, any company. Wal-mart is evil, but they’re no exception to the rule.
@thesabre: Nope – it’s a guarantee, not a brand. It may be a brand, too, but legally and linguistically we all know the difference between a brand name and a guarantee. Well, almost all of us.
@Terd_Ferguson:
I keep meaning to go to Walmart on a day when there is likely to be a receipt checker (if my local box practices, that is) and be ‘that guy’.
I actually was thinking the same crap as the OP. I was standing there at walmart, looking at the newest steaks they have, and thought wow, this is the worst shit in the world. I refuse to buy meat at walmart now. It’s USDA Choice meat, its over priced, and the cuts were terrible.
No Thank you.
Like the car priced at under 10K, it only $9999.00.
What about every hosting company on Earth advertising “99.9% uptime!”
That is such a crock… not ONE of them has ever lived up to it, because it’s impossible.
You should check on these products. Many of the beef products sold in the deep rigid packaging are filled with carbon monoxide (CO). The keeps the red color longer – possibly even past spoilage.
The only place I’ve seen this on primal cuts of beef (steak, etc) is in Walmart. All of the other local stores have either vacuum packaging or poly wrapped tray packaging.
@Dakine: Yes they can. Thats like 45 mins of downtime a month. Thats not too hard.
@thesabre: the commercials show they are indeed made by elves, are you telling me I can’t believe the commercials either? damn advertising, damn
No way really? Welcome to Advertising 101. I’m impressed that OP Richie actually took the time to write that email. No doubt that took more time than coming up with “Genuine Steakhouse Brand.”
@CaptZ: Yay Tommy Boy! And to the OP, nice rhetorical analysis. BS annoys me too.
I’m sorry, but I’m just not seeing the there there. He’s fussing of the words “Genuine” and “Steakhouse” but he’s ignoring the word “BRAND” that comes right after them. Its a brand name. That’s how brand names work. They inspire associations. They are promises or guarantees. Its Marketing 101 and forgive me if I can’t get worked up every time a company practices basic marketing. Seriously, this is the same thing they were doing when Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese got its name in 1880. They had the decency to slap “BRAND” right there on the name, so its not even like its that deceptive.
The only issue I’m seeing is Consumerist’s find on the website where the 100% Guaranteed Fresh is limited with unspecified restrictions. THAT I’d have a problem with, as that’s no brand name and I don’t understand how something can be 100% guaranteed and yet not. The brand is just that. Even if Richie doesn’t like their brand name, its still just a brand name. Having restrictions apply to a 100% Guarantee, however, defies the laws of mathematics.
@Bladefist:
Mine was down for an hour just today.
I’ve seen a cheese brand that has the name “Real”. I assume it’s a brand as
the word “Real” has the little trademark symbol.
The package labeling is something along the lines of “Made with 100%
Real(tm) cheese.”
Get it “Sun Drenched Beef”…..TAP….TAP…Is this thing on?
@Dakine: Then you need to be calling your host and telling them its over the 99.9 guaruntee and ask for that month refund. When my host goes down, I write down times and I’m on their ass.
@Dakine: And I’m always successful in getting a credit. Depending on how long it was down.
Lets think about this guys. The sheer scale of how much meat wal-mart sells is extreme. They can’t physically inspect every peice of meat they buy, and I’m a thousand percent sure Wal-Mart buys its meat from many many places. Anyone who bought as much meat as Wal-Mart does, would be bound to get bad cuts, just the same, they would be bound to get good cuts also. If you’re not on a budget when it comes to meat, you would most certainly find better (higher priced) meat elswhere. Apparently, contrary to popular opinion on here, there is an obvious market for their meat, not to mention the rest of wal-marts products, otherwise they wouldn’t be in business.
I don’t think I ever heard Wal-Mart, or any associates of, ever claim to have top choice meats. Nor do I think anyone would expect them to. It’s Wal-mart, it is what it is. The choice to shop there is just that, a choice.
@thesabre:
I have to agree. I put a ham radio in the oven last week and it tasted like SHIT.
@BStu: maybe the 100% guarantee applies to the restrictions,and not the other way around
surely you could provide a 100% freshness guarantee, subject to the freshness only applying within 10 days of buying it right?
@CaptZ: Wow… what movie was that from? Tommy Boy???
@magic8ball: Oh geeze, hadn’t got that far! Schnikes!
@opsomath: Perhaps you would prefer only the most terrible and far-reaching of issues ever be posted on this site. Well too bad.