And how was your year?
This recession hasn't just made things rough for people who sell things and people who can no longer buy them (because they also sell things to people who can no longer buy them.) It's made things rough for the nation's copywriters.
There used to be two headlines whose punch you couldn't improve upon: Grand Opening and Sale.
Sure you could add "pre-construction" or "builder's special" to Grand Opening. You could add "model close-out," to the stand-up sign with the red and blue balloons on it which reads the Rivers at Lakewood or Timbers at Creekwood. But nothing sold like Grand Opening.
And sale?
You could have an end-of-year sale, end-of-the-summer sale, Christmas-in-July sale, we've-lost-our-lease sale (right), we've-lost-our-mind sale (having got it back from last year), January White sale, back-to-school sale, Labor Day, Memorial Day and Father's Day sale, we've-got-to-make-room-for-the-new-models sale (right) and of course a Pre-construction sale at your Grand Opening.
But you couldn't always be on sale (or always be discounting "luxury" goods) if you didn't want to cry wolf.
But now Grand Openings have become Grand Closings--with real estate reporters replaced by count reporters--and the sale that retailers began at Halloween to salvage Christmas has become the proverbial Every Day Low Prices. Which is to say, not a sale at all.
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