Now how could Britain's favourite chemist have offended me? Unlike the other businesses featured in this occasional series, they retail the products of others. Surely it is the producers of ludicrously overpriced perfumes and the like who should face my ire?
No, let's stay focussed. For it is Boots itself that has sought to appropriate a commonplace saying and make it their own. Let's Feel Good. I mean, what does that say about them? Is some rival putting up posters with "Let's feel really awful today?". Who on earth doesn't want to feel good? Do you wake up some mornings, stumble blearily out of bed, chuck a shoe at some cat fighting in the alley outside your tenement and think "Today I want to feel good so I'm going to buy some bath oil?" Shopping is shopping. You go to the shops, buy what you want, go home. If you feel good before you start then fine. If not, buying things is not going to change anything (although it may put a smile on the face of the branch manager).
Not content with trying to associate "goodness" with "stuff you get in a chemists", Boots put the insufferably twee and patronising "Let's" at the start of their wish. It makes it sound as though we, the public, are somehow involved, that this is really our slogan and Boots are just joining in the general expression of well-being. But my friends, never forget that an adman wrote that slogan and admen have no souls or morals. I'll choose my feelings, thanks very much, and I don't need the marketing department of any corporation telling me what they are.
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