Greens Supermarket has issued a hilarious response to a satirical Bis Serjetà article about a man being kicked out for carrying a Lidl bag
Updated: Supermarket adds twist to satirical ‘news’ article
On Monday, well-known satire portal Bis Serjetà published the article ‘Peasant kicked out of Greens while carrying Lidl bag‘.
The Bis Serjetà story plays with the general public perception of the “upmarket” Greens supermarket chain, putting it in contrast to discounters.
It describes how one of Greens’ in-store robots detects a “peasant” with a Lidl bag, one of “the telltale signs of low socio-economic status”.
In a dead serious “formal response” on Facebook on Monday evening, Greens did not acknowledge the satirical nature of the article.
The supermarket chain instead spoke of “allegations” and even claimed that “upon learning of the article” it “immediately initiated an investigation into the matter”.
While the vast majority of readers most likely didn’t understand what triggered the supermarket’s posting, some commenters felt the need to point out that Greens was in fact reacting to satire.
On Tuesday morning, Greens published another response to “the article”, this time taking up Bis Serjetà’s fake story and adding another twist.
The supermarket jokingly announced its management had held an “intense meeting” with the robot where it “finally admitted that it said those words”.
This twist to the affair came just in time, as Bis Serjetà commented it had been on the verge of “releasing a press statement, and a small nuclear warhead”.
Just over a month ago, Malta Public Transport issued a statement following a clearly satirical article on Bis Serjetà about a fictitious ‘Take a foreigners’ seat’ campaign.
The company running the public bus service argued that Bis Serjetà doesn’t label its articles as satire and even threatened legal action against the use of its logo.
Companies abroad regularly take up satirical articles and actively hire social media agencies to draft silly replies, which nowadays is considered best practice among marketing experts.
German discounter giant Aldi, split in ‘Aldi’ and ‘Aldi Süd’ in its home country, shared and promoted an article by Der Postillon in 2018, announcing that the companies would be opening stores in North Korea and South Korea.
The article of the German satire page included some dark jokes like “North Koreans are extraordinarily hungry customers”.
Cover Image Montage: Greens Supermarket & NEWZ.mt
