ISSUE 8 / EDITORIAL

Pams Ruined My Birthday: Why Supermarkets Are Not Your Friend.

Jacob Ridder

The supermarket duopoly is always extending an arm out to the little guy, be it through giving out free Lego and fuel discounts, or cartel-like behaviour and a subjugation of family-owned farms.

The epitome of their care for you is homebrands. A no-nonsense label to fight the “big brands” that only want to exploit you for more money for the same product! (Please ignore that they set the prices and have a monopoly over stocking the “big brands”).

The Foodstuffs marketing team just coined “National Pams Day”. A celebration of this social service that the ever-benevolent conglomerate every citizen must shop at (lest they brave a Woolies) provides. 

Pams Day is the 22nd of August. The date piggybacks off of the World Pamela Day, a name from the Greek for “honey” and “sweet”, but it also just happens to be my birthday. Birthday: ruined.

Why does this ruin my birthday? Supermarket homebrands are not a “sweet” social good that saves households money.

Au contraire, they are a marketing ploy, and worse: the quintessence of commodity fetishism—the (stick with me here) concealment of the real work employees have put into making the product you consume in favour of a soulless brand image. 

Normally when you buy a product, there is at least a flicker of acknowledgement that, for instance, someone grew the fruit, someone jarred the product, someone drove it to the supermarket. You are aware of the real people involved.

But, by putting an identical label, Pams, onto every product, it tells you that these products have no history beyond simply existing and that you can just buy them as is. No acknowledgment of the local bakery behind making the biscuits, just a thing that you buy which you don’t need to think about.

And, above that, Pams tells you that you can have them at a “deal”. Unless you remember that the supermarket set the price for the big brands after they set the price for Pams products. Meaning, the “deal” is not actually a deal, it’s an illusion of a deal.

Essentially, Pams hides the corporate duopoly that has both artificially inflated the cost of putting food on the table (because who else are you going to buy from?), and squeezed family owned farms to an inch of breaking point (because who else are they going to sell to?).

And now they tell you to celebrate Pams on my birthday. Because you are the savvy consumer that shops smart with Pams; just to allow yourself to afford a little treat to break up the monotony of working pay-check to pay-check.

The solution: I don’t know. Communism? I’m just pissed off that they have taken over my birthday.

Send your letters to editor.thememo@gmail.com

Read this issue’s feature on “Kiwimart”, pg. 23.