Comments on: Sam’s Club’s Direct Mail Propaganda

By: Frank Martinez

Frank Martinez — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 04:10:26 +0000

As a follow up; does anyone know who created this work?

By: Frank Martinez

Frank Martinez — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 04:09:17 +0000

I don’t view this work as intrinsically racist. It is more of an attempt to meld humor with an image that will resonate with our politcal-cultural memory. It bears the “touch points” that remind us of a not so distant cold war while defusing them with comic-cultural-consumerist iconography.

By: PixelHustler

PixelHustler — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:41:08 +0000

Hahaha, this reminds me of a shirt that I designed for a middle school once. I had about 2 hours to come up with this design, and I had -just- finished looking at a bunch of Soviet propaganda posters. The shirt was done in a Soviet font, and it feaured two hands shaking inside a circle (yes, the handshake of racial harmony or whatever), but done in vector, and styled to resemble the “Fight the Power” fist. I REALLY expected the school to reject the design, but they loved it! I definitely got a good chuckle out of that one.

By: Mike Rohde

Mike Rohde — Tue, 01 May 2007 14:04:07 +0000

Oops, sorry about the double-post there. Took a while for the server to accept the first comment.

By: Mike Rohde

Mike Rohde — Tue, 01 May 2007 13:39:25 +0000

Adrian, interesting observation about the style, though I think it looks more like Maoist Communist chinese propaganda posters:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&resnum=0&q=chinese%20propaganda%20poster

Which is interesting in the context of the subject of the poster.

Personally, I’m not sure much of the Sams Club membership would even realize this is a style lifted from propaganda posters, and the probably 000.1% of the Sams population who may have caught this, probably had a chuckle about it.

By: Mike Rohde

Mike Rohde — Tue, 01 May 2007 13:37:43 +0000

Adrian, interesting observation about the style, though I think it looks more like Maoist Communist chinese propaganda posters:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&resnum=0&q=chinese%20propaganda%20poster

Which opens up to other interesting angles…

By: Jesse Thomas

Jesse Thomas — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 23:51:58 +0000

Regarding the duck in the pocket, as a father of two I find it perfectly normal to have a duck in my pocket while exiting a store carrying a tired child and an armload of groceries.

To the note on the asian family I feel this was very well planned for a company that has a global perspective considering 60% of the world population is asian. The style does portray empowerment of the individual for the purpose of a greater cause which seems to be a legitimate message for the product.

Featuring pictures of organic food wouldn’t really set themselves apart from the unorganic food (which are generally more attractive) so I can see why they focused on the abstract qualities that draw consumers to buy organic, namely it’s health and environmental benefits (hence the family, style and blue sky). And no, I’m not affiliated with Sam’s Club.

By: Farco

Farco — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:04:40 +0000

It’s the classic “looking into the future” pose.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:24:35 +0000

dj_sissor, Well, if they did have different versions for different markets then they made a mistake by putting me in the “Asian” category. It seems most unlikely that they would have multiple versions of this piece, though. I would vote for lack of planning over strategic planning on this one. I am not sure on this, but I doubt that you could even buy a mailing list based on race alone.

By: dj_sissor

dj_sissor — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:59:59 +0000

This is a direct mail piece. In reference to the “Asian people” comment. How do we know that Sam’s didn’t do several versions of this with different families? Afroamerican, white, hispanic and then just deliver the “appropiate” one to the “appropiate” makert/neighborhood?

And so what is up with the duck thing? Is this some sort of inside Asian reference? or something to do with Sams?