Selling Independence Day

New Zealand is not the United States, or vice versa. You’d think this would be obvious, but it’s surprising how much the lines get blurred. One of the blurring forces is retail advertising in New Zealand, even though it sometimes doesn’t quite work. Still, as an American loving overseas, it is a sort of connection to my homeland.

Even when I lived in the USA, Independence Day (Fourth of July) was first and foremost, a day off work. That may seem trivial, but we had so few of them that each one was special. After that was time with family and/or friends, and sales at various retailers. Hooking such sales onto an irrelevant public holiday is as American as a Pavlova—wait, what? Yep, NZ retailers try and appropriate Independence Day for sales, too, which seems fair since some Americans are now trying to claim they created New Zealand’s national dessert.

I don’t pay any attention to advertising flyers delivered to our letterbox—they go directly to the recycling bin unread—but I do pay attention to ads in emails (even though I don’t act on them). So, I thought I’d share a few of those emailed ads.

The first ad, up top, is form the Chicago Tribune, still promoting digital subscriptions. The paper has been sending me solicitations for their digital subscriptions several days a week, every week, and sometimes, like this one, they’re irrelevantly tied to a holiday. Still, points for persistence, I suppose.

Next up (at right) is a straightforward Fourth of July sale from a publisher whose digital magazine I used to subscribe to. They, too, are persistent in these messages, and promotion of their various other online offerings. In this case, though, I redacted the name of the publisher, because it’s funny to me to do so.

Now, ads here in New Zealand, and the first of those is for technology retailer PB Tech. I recently landed on their email list when a company I ordered from in the past was bought by PB Tech. That’s fine with me, though, because I’ve bought a LOT of stuff from PB Tech physical stores over the years, and now I have an online account. Even so, quite frankly, this was just bizarre—far more USSR than USA, I thought. Points for mentioning the other American import, Black Friday, which also has no relevance to New Zealand.

And finally, the one NZ email ad I saw that was totally relevant, Martha’s Backyard, “The American Store” here in Auckland. This particular email arrived this morning, and acknowledges that while it’s the fourth here, it’s not the fourth in the USA until tomorrow. An expat’s life, eh?

So, those are typical Fourth of July/Independence Day sale promotions I received over the past week.

As for me, I had lunch at Denny’s today, which is pretty American, really. Other than that, it was an ordinary day. After all, New Zealand is not the United States, or vice versa.

Previously
Celebrating the Fourth of July (2015)
Fourth of July (2014)
Are you proud? (2013)
Fourth of July (2011)
Time, distance and home (2009)