Bad advertising

This weekend, besides partying I also had to do other useful things like getting groceries. I was walking on the Meir, the big shopping street in Antwerp. It's always full of people and it's the place where it's most likely that somebody presses a flyer in your hand for some store. Usually I don't take these flyers, but on Saturday a girl on the street offered me a plastic bag with something in it and I took it!

I don't know exactly why. Was it that I was still a bit dazzled from partying the day before? Or did my interest for marketing make me curious what was in the bag? Cause if you give a whole bag, you kind of raise expectations. What could be in it? Some funny stickers? A scarf? (would've been good because it's getting colder) A T-shirt? I looked and it the bag was...just a job magazine. One that you can get anywhere for free. Nothing else.

Now that's a dissapointment. It's like giving somebody a present with nothing in it. I can imagine how dissapointed people on the street must have been. I could see how dissapointed they had been, because at 10 metre distance from the promotion team, some of the plastic bags were lying on the street. With the logo of the magazine on it so that all the passers-by could see what a polluting brand it is.

What goes on in the minds of the people who initiated such a bad promotion? Do they really think that people will read anything they get in their hands? Or was it just a way to artificially raise the circulation of the magazine to get more advertisers? Whatever it is, it's bad advertising.