Monday, January 17, 2011

Better marketing through dyslexia

I drove past this sign the other day on my way to the mall. Sonny's restaurants are all over the place around here so you're liable to drive past three or four of them no matter where you go. Still, there was something unusual about this particular sign at this particular location, something I wasn't quite sure I had seen correctly at first glance. So I turned around and took another look...
Yep, that's what I thought.
It's pretty easy to see how someone could think that says "Hooters" and not an abbreviation for headquarters, not when they're driving past at 45 MPH and especially when the standard, accepted abbreviation for headquarters is the shorter, simpler "HQ".
I don't know if they're attempting some kind of subliminal deceit (I kind of doubt it; any time I've ever eaten at Sonny's, everybody seemed really nice and I'd like to think they're above that kind of thing) or if that would even work. People with dyslexia aren't stupid; they just have difficulty reading.
If Sonny's is trying to market to truly stupid people, I guess I have mixed feelings about it. I don't have a problem with anybody clever enough to figure out a way to separate money from people too dumb to have it in the first place. But still...on one hand, it's difficult to feel sorry for anybody stupid enough to think that one restaurant would simply turn into another one, even one day a week. But on the other hand, you gotta feel a little sympathy for anybody who walks into a place expecting this:
Hello, nurse!
And getting this instead:
"Howdy folks! Y'all ready to put a whole mess o' my meat in your mouth?"

1 comment:

Jeff Hickmott said...

Having eaten at Sonny's, I can only say... "Eewww".