Posting OOSHIES

[bubblebooks2020]

Ooshies, those horrid plastic Woolworths things. My mum had a heap of them so I was looking at what they are selling for. People are selling the individual Ooshies for $4 or $5, up to $10 each with free postage. The only way they could make a profit on that is to send them as a large letter. I measured my Ooshies and the smallest is 25mm wide, up to 35mm, too big to send as a large letter. So 1 Ooshie would be a parcel. I imagine these sellers are sending their Ooshies in an envelope with 2 stamps. I bet Australia Post hate that, as things bigger than 2cm can get caught in their sorting machines. How do people get away with this? As a rule I don't send anything thicker than 18mm as a large letter. Anyone else selling Ooshies???

[countessalmirena]

I can remember the IT Crowd emergency number. 0118 999 881 999 119 7253

[collect247]

For some reason you've made me sing the Skippy theme song lol it's not an ad but a show skippy skippy skippy the bush kangaroo

[casbit33]

You'll probably have a lot more of these type of items to sell in the future. I can't see them stopping any time soon.

I read that coles attributed 11 million dollars profit made because of the first round of little shop items, so that was obviously the reason for the second round. Woolworths wouldn't want to miss out on that money so they get  ooshies and other stuff going as well

It's all driven by the amazing $$$$$$

[brerrabbit585]

Who's Mrs Marsh?

I remember the "Hooray, hooray, I heard Mum say, Heinz is on for lunch today" from the late 60s or early 70s.  I remember a group of us at school trying to figure out what one of the words was and someone eventually figured it out.  I hate ads with poor diction where you don't even know what they're saying/singing!  That alone is enough to put me off their products.  If they can't afford to pay for a decent ad, how is the rest of their business run?  Will the product be made properly or are short-cuts taken?

How remembering an ad can actually influence you is beyond me.  I wouldn't eat heinz if you paid me, or 99.9999% of stuff that comes out of a can or a packet.  Even when the ad was current, we wouldn't have eaten heinz because it was too expensive.  

[digital*ghost]

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:

How remembering an ad can actually influence you is beyond me. 

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Short rail against ad that annoyed you followed by wondering how it can influence you >?

You remember it years - decades - later, you hate it, or are at least annoyed by it, and were inspired to post about it - including the brand name.

How is that not influence? 

Yes, we're discussing advertising and their effects on people, so you're not going to go around talking about it every day at random intervals, but there are a lot of ways it comes up organically, and it's obviously always there. 

Examining culture and what influences people (and / or how), is one of my favourite past-times (or rather, learning from other people who do it full time, lol). 

[countessalmirena]

brerrabbit, from what I have (recently - very recently) read about subversive advertising, even when the effect on a particular individual of a particular piece of advertising is negative, that can be effective. It appears to be about brand recognition, and getting into the public consciousness, and being "part of the conversation". If you have ever sat over coffee, for instance, with someone else and the two of you have said how horrible a particular ad is, as long as what you said included the brand name it has apparently achieved a very strong part of its purpose.

That anecdote about the group of you at school trying to figure out the words...? It may have been part of the objective of the ad. I'm not sufficiently in the know about how advertising works in that sense, hence all that I can add is that recognition is a very strong part of being sought-after.

Probably the best revenge against advertisers and advertising campaigns is to say something like "I don't recognise the name. Hey, have you read the latest Jo Nesbø, Knife, yet? It is such dark Nordic noir; I kept feeling shudders throughout my entire body as I read, but I couldn't put it down..." so that the conversation is entirely moved away from the ad that was being discussed.

[brerrabbit585]

I think we have a different definition of the word influence. I go by the Oxford dictionary's definition which means that it has power over me or has an effect on my actions.

Merely remembering something doesn't mean it has any power over me in affecting my actions. I remember certain car ads because of the jingles that go with them but they have absolutely no influence on/over me. A car is just something to get me from A to B so when I buy one the primary factors are comfort (I used to have a crooked spine so comfort is extremely important) and reliability/cost to run.

I only buy another car when I absolutely have to because I can't afford a new one and hate the time and effort and stress involved in finding another secondhand one. I currently drive a Mercedes, which is something I never thought about buying previously, but I needed another car and it was offered to me for $3,000 and only had 63,000 kms on the clock and I knew its history, so I grabbed it.

I remember the heinz jingle but heinz has no influence on me whatsoever - it's completely neutral. I wouldn't not buy it because of an ad on tv, nor would I buy it because of their advertising. I wouldn't buy heinz but that's because I don't eat ANY foods that have been processed in that sort of way. 

While I say I would avoid a lot of companies because of their poor quality ads, I'm extremely unlikely to be wanting those types of products anyway.  Those ads do have an influence though - a negative one, in that they influence me not to buy from them.

[digital*ghost]

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:

I think we have a different definition of the word influence. I go by the Oxford dictionary's definition which means that it has power over me or has an effect on my actions.

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Not really. What I am suggesting is that the ad did have an affect on your actions. If you had not remembered it, you could not have taken the action of sharing the anecdote. Your post would have been completely different (or perhaps non-existant) if you had not remembered that singular ad from long ago.

Plus, if you consciously avoid a product because of an ad, that is influence also - the ad is affecting your choices and behaviour... While it may not be the intention of an ad, you're still retaining awareness of the brand, and likely spreading that awareness whenever you tell someone you won't buy X product; that sort of thing is not always counter-productive for a brand. Outrage marketing increased Nike's value by billions. 

But, if people would prefer to believe advertising (and to be clear, I am using this term in its broadest of terms) has no effect of them whatsoever, so be it. I don't gain anything by convincing them otherwise.

@countess, if interested in some further reading, have a dive into parasocial interaction / relationships, and how that's leveraged by brands, celebrities, sports teams, internet "influencers" etc, into $$$ 🙂   

[countessalmirena]

[stylesilver]

Well that's good to hear for sales!!😊 Maybe not for the enviroment tho.... 11 Million profit is hard (for even these big companies) to come by these days... So that is enuf incentive to keep going...so yr probably right that they'll keep going! And I think a lot of the cost of producing e Little shop items is paid by the product company ( that would explain why there's a Breff toilet cleaner in the range- can't imagine a kid being too excited about that🙄... Oooh look Mum... Yay! We got the toilet cleaner tablet!!)

But in case the Ooshies popularity is fading... Gonna get myself a "loss leader" item I think... Might try that as a way to bring in more sales... You know ... Where I don't make a lot of profit but it gets more lookers at other items... Gonna try this theory out!! 

Keep going to try Charmeleons advice of selling to overseas customers..cos of the our lower $$$... But still thinking I'll get bad feedback if items take too long getting there...