Exposing the Dark Side of Branding
How Payless ShoeSource hoodwinked a horde of social media influencers
Social media influencers, the joke’s on you. You fell for a branding experiment, the ultimate emperor’s new clothes. Payless ShoeSource—a retail chain ubiquitous with back-to-school shopping, inexpensive trendy footwear, and suburban strip mall retailing—created an elaborate hoax, a trompe l’oeil brand called Palessi that hoodwinked so-called social media influencers into believing their cheap footwear was an expensive European brand.
The retail chain, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2017, paid a small stipend to fashion-oriented social media influencers to attend an alleged gala opening of a new European-style shoe store. The store, dubbed Palessi, even had a fake website and Instagram account.
Videos online of the influencers oohing and aahing over sparkling boots, sneakers, and other footwear ended with a big reveal of the company behind Palessi. “You’re kidding me, right?” one astonished diva exclaims. She had just admitted she would pay $400 for a pair of boots that retails for $39.
Payless reports that its experiment resulted in $3,000 of sales in the first few hours, and one high offer translated to an 1,800-percent price markup. The event lasted two days, and the company refunded the…
