If you’ve been in London in the past week or so, you may have noticed Dixons.co.uk’s tongue-in-cheek new marketing campaign:

Dixons.co.uk - The last place you want to go

The campaign, by M&C Saatchi, takes a swipe at department stores John Lewis and Selfridges, using their own brand identities to describe the process of visiting to high street stores to get the lowdown on a product, before going home and buying it online. Many savvy, albeit cheeky, consumers will be more than familiar with this scenario already, and at this point I should probably come clean, hold my hands up, and admit to having done this a couple of times myself.

So, having had first hand experience of this, the ad initially made me smile… until I read the tag-line “The last place you want to go”. Wait… what?! As a retailer fighting for customers, why would you spend thousands of pounds telling the public that your website is the last place they want to go?

I understand that it implies you should go to their website last, following a visit to the high street, but surely this could have been better worded than “The last place you want to go”.

I personally like the advert, and although the design leaves a lot to be desired visually, the use of the department store’s own branding is essential to make the concept work so well . The tagline however just bewilders me. M&C Saatchi… what were you thinking?

Is there more to this than meets the eye? Leave a comment.