Don’t Get One Free When You Buy Another

In the annoying world of advertising, the five words that irritate me the most are, “Buy one, get one free.”  For those of you who think this is a good thing, I ask you to look a bit deeper.

If we are dealing with perishables, then getting two means you either have to over consume or end up throwing the second out when it starts to spoil. Well, you can always force yourself to finish the second, but America does have a problem with obesity, so maybe that’s not the right approach.

Well, you can always freeze things for a later date. Yes, and buy bigger refrigerators and freezers to keep things in, thus filling up your house and raising you electric bill. Even wonder how much extra power it takes to keep a couple of pounds of meat frozen for a month?

Ah, but what about non perishables?  Surely, if you can get a deal on something, it’s worth having a second. I guess that depends on how soon you’ll need the second. If you use up the first in a day or two, there might be a good reason to have two. Otherwise you have a storage issue. Ever wonder why people constantly try to move up to bigger houses? Why do you need 3,000 square feet of home?  To store all those “second” items that you hope to use one day.

And, of course, people forget what they’ve stored, so the next time there’s a buy one, get one free sale, they rush out and get two more, anything to save a few cents. Soon, the 3,000 sq. ft. house is too small, and it’s time to trade up to something the size of a supermarket.

American’s are over consumers. We seem to be obsessed with stocking up on stuff, an attitude probably left over from the frontier days, when it was an all day horse and wagon trip to the closest store. Wake up. Those days are over. Everything you need is a short auto trip from home. Better still, you can buy in online, without leaving the house.

A trip to Italy opened my eyes. The place we rented had a typical Italian refrigerator, about a quarter the size of one of ours. At the local market, people would stop on the way home from work and pick up some meat, bread, veggies and a bottle of wine for the evening meal, and perhaps some rolls and milk for breakfast. Everything was fresh, and there was no reason to have a walk in freezer. And the whole time I was there, I never saw, “Buy one, get one free.”