John Lewis or Dixons?

Last evening I came across a tube card that read

"Step into Middle England's best loved department store, stroll through haberdashery to the audio visual department where an awfully well brought up young man will bend over backwards to find the right TV for you ... then go to Dixons.co.uk and buy it".

In the bottom right hand of this card the dixon.co.uk address was repeated with the strapline - "the last place you want to go".

(Dead right it's the last place I want to go - but more of that later!)

The main body of the copy was set in JLPGill, the John Lewis house typeface so there was no doubting whose customers Dixons were after.

Whilst my initial reaction was to be slightly shocked, I then had a second or two of admiration before I then started to get a little annoyed. I like John Lewis and the sardonic, mickey-taking tone of the copy made me resolve never to shop at Dixons - ever. Dixons were talking about a store that has earned my respect over decades and that has never, ever let me down. Whenever I have shopped in John Lewis I have always been treated with respect and courtesy and to hear them being criticised by a business that survives by selling at the lowest possible price by offering no service whatsoever makes me just a little angry. Dixons are typical of what John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) was talking about when he wrote:

It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.

If I ever bought something that didn't do what it was supposed to do, I know who I would rather have bought it from - and their name doesn't begin with a D!

If the cards are read by people who already buy on price from cheap companies, then they might (if they have the intelligence to recognise the JLP branding) have a laugh, carry on buying from Dixon's and never discover the meaning of service and quality. If readers have already discovered the joy of shopping in Middle England's most loved department store, they wouldn't touch Dixon's with a bargepole anyway and would only get annoyed at the copy on the card.

So I reckon Dixon's have shot themselves in the foot with these tube cards - it's oh so easy to be abusive about anything that's clean, wholesome and generally successful. Can anybody enlighten me as to the marketing strategy behind these cards unless it's to get people like me annoyed enough to blog about them?