I took my kids to the mall today to sit on Santa’s lap and get some photos of them. First I started with a 45 minute wait to get to Santa. There wasn’t anything near to entertain the overwhelming supply of kids under 5. I noticed a trend. By the time the kids reached Santa, they were cranky from standing in line for 45 minutes without anything to do. A decent operation would have setup some sort of winter wonderland (even if it is fake) to entertain the kids while the parents waited in line.
From a pure marketing standpoint, if the kids were entertained while waiting, then maybe they would be in a better mood when they were done visiting with Santa and would be more apt to travel the mall with their parents to spend money.
That’s not my real beef though. My problem is with the whole Santa visiting thing. I remember a time when Santa was hired by the mall to attract people to come in and… guess what, by more stuff! Then someone got the idea to add a new contraption called a polaroid and sell pictures on the spot for a few bucks. Fast forward a couple decades now every printer rivals photo labs and are far superior to yesteryear’s polaroids. Even prosumer dig cams are producing output comparing to some of the best 35mm SLRs used years ago.
Now Santa and his crew are paying rent to the mall, and are run by a photo studio. In other words $24 for one 8×10 instant print. They had other options too, two 5×7′s for $24. Those two were the cheapest instant packages. You could order the previous mentioned packages for $17 bones and wait, but I didn’t have that option. I was told that the lab shut down and the only packages available were the instant prints. Bullshit!
Let me get this strait. A studio, whose sole job is to sell prints, shuts down it’s lab. Right. Or maybe it is telling it’s employees to lie to customers to sell them a more expensive print. A photo studio does not shut down it’s labs just because it will be shutting down the santa display. It definitely stays open to keep processing all the business outside of this seasonal job. It really bugs me when the company blatantly lies to it’s employees, and in turn without thinking (like most people do), the employees spout off the same bullshit to the customers. And whats worse, people buy it!
I think I’m tired of this holiday becoming so commercial and materialistic.
Have a Merry Christmas everyone. Remember, don’t spoil your kids with gifts. They won’t remember the gifts a year later, but will always remember the time you spent with them instead of buying them off.
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