The choice is yours
Nancy Friedman analyzes “choice” as a marketing term:
Choice is most flattering in its adjectival sense — select, superior, elite. That’s how we’re meant to perceive Ohio-based Choice Brands (“a wholesale appliance distributor for Brands of Choice”), Choice Hotels International (an economy-to-mid-market chain that, naturally, offers a Choice Privileges program), and President’s Choice, Canada’s largest private-label brand (food and consumer products, mostly, but also financial services). With President’s Choice, we get a double whammy of elite-ness: If the president (of the company) chose it, it must be really special! But here’s a little secret: All of these Choices are wishful thinking. Truly elite brands never broadcast “elite” in their names.
And the Sam’s Choice label at Walmart is perhaps the least-elite brand of them all.
Still, the most blatant example of “choice” presenting itself as a superior option is in USDA beef grades: “Choice” is the second grade from the top, ranking below “Prime” but above “Select,” which used to be called merely “Good.” There are five grades below that, none of which are “Okey-Dokey,” as seen in a Food Clown ad in the Dacron Republican-Democrat, circa 1978.
Disclosure: I have wangled, over the years, several hundred dollars’ worth of freebies from the Choice Privileges program.
fillyjonk »
17 January 2010 · 2:57 pm
I think Jewel stores (before Albertson’s bought them out) used to carry President’s Choice here in the US. (Whether it was the same brand or one by the same name I do not know).
Is there still “Cutter and Canner” grade meat? Or (as we used to say in grade school) “Grade D But Edible,” which was allegedly what the cafeteria served?
CGHill »
17 January 2010 · 3:14 pm
Below “Select,” you’ve got “Standard,” “Commercial,” “Utility,” and then at the bottom, “Cutter” and “Canner.”
Which, I suppose, you’d wash down with a tall glass of Malk.
The Adventures of Roberta X »
17 January 2010 · 6:02 pm
Web-Wander…
I got there (after a side trip) from his altogether different hobby site; and for that, we can blame none other than Chas. G. Hill, Esq. And I don’t think he even owns a horse…
McGehee »
17 January 2010 · 9:58 pm
They turned up in Lucky stores in northern California in the early ’90s (hence, before they were absorbed by Albertson’s), about the time that chain stopped stocking its in-house “Harvest Day” brand that I’d grown up with.
At mid-decade when I moved to Fairbanks and walked into a Fred Meyer store for the first time and saw “PC” on soft drink cans there, I was profoundly unthrilled — but eventually Fred stopped carrying them, at about the same time I guess that Kroger Corp. bought the chain.
In 2004, after being mostly Kroger store shoppers for five years, we went back to Fairbanks for a visit and found Fred no longer stocked anything branded with its own name anymore but “Kroger” instead. And the soft drinks were Kroger’s in-house “Big K” brand.
Seemed kind of a letdown after traveling 4,000 miles.