A Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing

Look at this display. What do you see?

Shelves of portable hard drives.

But Walmart’s branding has failed. The Walmart “splat” logo icon is near the top of the display, and I think they’re relying on the icon alone to reinforce the Walmart brand.

Here’s why: Instead of using one of the stock phrases about savings (or even better, a custom phrase about technology savings) their designers decided to use this advertising for a line about taxes.

Huh? What do these hard drives have to do with taxes? Nothing. I even looked more closely to see if there was some kind package deal — buy a hard drive, get free tax software, or something like that. Nothing. Nada.

So instead of reinforcing the savings brand image, Walmart is confusing people.

(If Western Digital has seen this, they probably aren’t too happy either. I hope.)