O RLY Safeway!?

by Javantea
Jan 29, 2009

Tonight a very special and unique look into the advertising machine and those who hate it with a passion only describable in vulgarity. That's right, a screenshot of my e-mail client with almost all my e-mail since 11/05/2007. If you feel that you can find some hidden information in this screenshot, I don't doubt it at all. This is incredibly rich data about me and I really consider it to be a privilege for me to be able to be so open about my communication as to write this article with it included without any need for self-censorship.

Javantea's E-mail featuring a horrible Safeway Ad

The main reason for my writing this article is to call out Safeway into answering for their e-mail marketing campaign which is so awful that it is recommending "Rancher's Reserve Beef Ribeye Steak" and "Rancher's Reserve Boneless Beef Chuck Pot Roast" to a vegetarian of 6 years. I have not purchased any beef from Safeway in my entire life using the club card (loyalty discount card) or not. I am not saying that their algorithm is completely false because it matched Oroweat and Organic Salad, but I am absolutely certain that they have gone far beyond legitimate matching to provide a vegetarian with a sale on beef. I am offended by their algorithm. As you can see, it says quite specifically in the subject "JOEL, 6 new specials picked just for you" and elsewhere it says, "We've got great savings on several of your favorite items." I would not have been offended by this advertisement had it been completely random saying: "Yo bitch, we don't know you at all, so eat our meat," but instead it has named me specifically, given two items that I am very likely to eat and then completely obviously added two items which I would never eat in my entire life. This is my crusade against completely offensive advertising and today I start with you Safeway. Let's hear what you have to say in your defense.

As a vegetarian, I have had many people, some dear to me, tell me that I will certainly get sick and die if I don't eat some sort of animal products. The most recent was my grandmother, an organic farmer who plainly knows food better than anyone I have ever known. She told me that B12 is only available through animal products and that multivitamins that offer it are almost certainly lying. I don't take any multivitamin because my vegetarian diet has always tested the assumption that a vegetarian diet is incomplete. If it's incomplete, something horrible ought to happen to me right? If I'm wrong, may a vengeful deity strike me down, right? If lack of B12 is fatal in the near term, then I most certainly do not lack B12. My grandmother had a few items of wisdom that I had to question because the advent of the internet allows us to verify anything a person says pretty quickly. For example, the requirement for B12 is very low and comes from bacteria. It would seriously harm me and I would know for sure if I lacked it. This information came from a Vegan resource. Looking at the rice beverage I drink sometimes, I notice that it has 25% of the daily requirement of B12 per serving. I don't drink ricemilk daily nor do I drink 4 servings, but it seems reasonable that other sources exist.

I am a purveyor of ideas and values which the people I know are well aware. They must have many mixed emotions about my being a vegetarian and it makes perfect sense to ask me what I think or tell me that they think vegetarian diet might not be complete. My scientific experiment to decide whether a vegetarian diet is complete and quite interestingly preferable was designed to use the best minds available to decide whether a valid conclusion can be made. That is why I enjoy conversation about vegetarianism even if the other person is a carnivore or a strict omnivore. Science does not thrive in a vacuum, it enjoys being tested and in testing its own hypothesis.

How does this relate to this advertisement? Unlike Safeway, the people with whom I discuss these things genuinely care about my well being. Safeway is trying to make a buck. I don't dislike them for that. Their pursuit of money is most certainly the reason why they are cheaper than Whole Foods and Trader Joes. It's also the reason they're closer than Trader Joes and open later than both of them. The question of Safeway has little to do with ideals of vegetarianism and everything to do with Safeway making money. Safeway wants to make money selling food, and I want to buy food. Safeway has been gathering data about me for 6 years as I have shopped there twice a week without fail and I have not attempted to obfuscate my data in any way*. The advertisers who send me mail weekly have everything going for them, but their greed has blinded them to the fact that their data has a very simple and obvious trend. If a person is vegetarian, they will be absolutely offended if you send them personalized coupons for meat. I can see it from the advertisers perspective: "Each time we put beef into our personalized coupons arbitrarily, we get a ton of people buying beef, amazing isn't it?" But it's almost trivial to understand that there are people who exist who consider that unethical.

* Though I value my privacy, what I eat and when I shop is less interesting data. If loyalty card data is used for its worst purpose (random warrantless searches of activity involved in vicinity of a crime), I would gladly stand in front of a grand jury and refuse to offer any testimony.

I have no problem with people who are omnivores. I have no qualm with the sellers or butchers of animals. I have no reason to tell Safeway not to advertise their products. But I can plainly see the failure of their advertisers to understand that vegetarians exist. By making a huge faux pas (pronounced foh paw) they have in fact done the opposite of advertising, they have turned a loyal customer away. I'm not one to idly mince words. I've been buying food at Whole Foods off and on for a few weeks now. The $200-300 I spend per month on groceries is going more and more towards Safeway's competitor. If Safeway's e-mail advertising team would like to make a change and make it visible, I will consider spending a bit of my money there. Instead I will put great effort into depriving every penny I can from Safeway.

Javantea out.

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