I got a flyer in the mail the other day from the local Pizza Pizza. Among the deals for family combos and chicken sandwiches was something that seemed both of this time and a sign that things are getting strange. The ad shows a pizza slice that’s also a lock, and it’s next to something called “Fixed-Rate Pizza.” If you go to the website on the bottom, you’ll get your pizza for the same price until July 2023. According to the ad copy on the website:
“Inflation is on the rise. Gas prices keep getting higher. Rent costs and mortgage rates are off the charts. Fixed-Rate Pizza offers stability and peace of mind…”
There’s even a little questionnaire to fill out, with silly questions like “Does your face like eating pizza?” and clicking the link takes you right to the order form on the Pizza Pizza website, where for about $17 you can get an XL-sized pizza with four toppings. The creamy garlic dip is sadly not included.
I’ll leave behind the debate over if Pizza Pizza is any good or even if this deal is especially great, because what interests me here is how advertising is copping from the language of the business section and taking something that seems abstract, but has very real repercussions, and making it into a fun little piece of advertising.
According to Stats Canada, the Consumer Price Index was up over eight per cent in June 2022, the largest gain in almost 40 years. They have a handy graph, showing a five-year trend: until it took a huge dip in early 2020, it was generally pretty stable. And around the beginning of last year, it started rising until it looked like the mountain a roller coaster rises up at the beginning of a ride.
There are many reasons why the cost of living has gone up, and although I’m no specialist, I can think of a few: the Federal government bailed out corporations that may otherwise have failed during the pandemic and they stimulated the economy by boosting the money supply. As I recall from high school economics, when there’s more money printed, it devalues the money already circulating. Meanwhile the workforce took a hit: people left their jobs, while supplies were getting harder to come by as industries pivoted to a pandemic workload, which made it harder to make goods and harder to send them out.
A personal example: I remember supermarkets weren’t carrying as many brands of canned pop because aluminum was harder to come by, so companies like PepsiCo and Presidents Choice consolidated their production to specific brands that sold; even now, I don’t see the King Cans of Pepsi anymore at most supermarkets.
At the same time, certain indexes are going down. Take oil: West Texas Intermediate was trading at over $120 a barrel in early June. Now, almost three months later, it’s dropped almost $30 to about $93 a barrel. This is reflected in gas prices here in Ontario. Gasoline peaked in early June at over $2.00/Liter, but this morning it was down to about $1.55/Liter at the place I drove past when I got a coffee.
But one thing that hasn’t changed is wages. According to Stats Canada, the average wage has increased by four dollars since 2017: from about $26/hr to $30/hr. Seems good right? But the Ontario minimum wage will be $15.50/hr this October, which is a rise of about 3.33 per cent. according to a 2021 report, over 500,000 people make minimum wage. That same year, Canadian CEOs saw their pay rise over 23 per cent. Remember: the Consumer Price Index is at about eight per cent. Thus: the rich get richer and the people at the bottom stay at the bottom.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that things are unstable, both rising and falling in costs and it can be anxiety-inducing for consumers who are maybe seeing their wages rise but not at the same cost as inflation. It’s hard to budget when your dollar isn’t worth what it was a few years ago.
Back to the Fixed-Rate Pizza. It’s taking language from the world of economics and applying it to advertising. In banking, the rate of interest is tied to things in the market that are outside of the borrower’s control, but in the lender’s interest. The higher the risk, the higher the rate of interest because there’s more on the line for the lender. A fixed-rate however, keeps the interest at a specific level - the market doesn’t dictate changes. This works well if you’re doing a mortgage over 10 or 15 years, when the market could take wild swings.
It makes less sense for pizza. But that’s not the point, really. Because the language the ad uses doesn’t really reflect what it’s selling - that the price of a pizza will stay fixed for a year. It may seem good, but then again, in a large market these things don’t really change too often.
Let’s take the price of coffee. At Tim Hortons, a medium coffee costs $1.83. Prices did go up earlier this year, but generally they don’t change much. A quick google search suggests the last time they raised prices was in 2017, and before that in 2014. I guess it comes in cycles: every few years the price goes up a few cents, which seems about in line with inflation.
I wasn’t able to find any specific data for pizza, but I imagine it’s about the same: prices go up every few years, but not by too much because Pizza Pizza is able to buy ingredients in bulk and get a good price on them. Which makes the Fixed-Rate Pizza seem more sizzle than steak: if food only increases a little bit, and only every few years at that, what’s the point of the gimmick? The answer: it’s just capitalizing on economic anxiety to make a buck.
The people who make ads know what sells and they know what people are worried about. How many TV ads have you seen lately where they use phrases like “welcome back” to remind you that you can go and dine in again? These companies know people are anxious about COVID but that they also want things to seem like they were before - so they welcome you back in, but also remind you that their servers have vaccines, wear masks and practice sanitation. One would hope they always wash their hands, but now it’s a selling point.
So it is with this. Pizza will generally remain the same price, and barring anything too wild like a complete collapse in grain or tomato supplies, it probably will for the next year or so (and if that happens, you’ll probably have enough on your plate that you won’t care about pizza costs). But the language of this ad is reassuring, telling you that no matter what happens, your pizza will still be the same price. It’s comforting.
And I suppose that’s kind of the deal with so-called Late Capitalism: no longer is it enough that pizza has to be delicious, it has to fill an emotional need as well. It doesn’t have to just sate your hunger, it has to reassure you that things are okay. Capitalism, and to a lesser extent Globalism, helped cause this mess and now it’s offering you relief from it, too. Enjoy your slice.