Payless taught fashion influencers a lesson about shoes by opening a fake store that sold Main Street shoes at Madison Avenue prices.
Payless ShoeSource held a launch party in Los Angeles for the bogus label Palessi and invited the fashionistas to sample the merchandise. Payless posted a video of what happened on Facebook.
The VIP shoppers paid as much as $645 for shoes that sell from $19.99 to $39.99 at Payless. The store rang up $3,000 before Payless came clean with the reveal.
One shopper exclaimed, “Shut up! Are you serious?”
The pranked shoppers got their money back and were allowed to keep the shoes.
Their reactions will be featured in a series of commercials.
Ex-Nissan chief still in Tokyo jail
A Tokyo court approved a 10-day extension of jail time for Carlos Ghosn, head of the Renault-Nissan alliance, on Friday as prosecutors assess allegations of financial misconduct.
Ghosn, a charismatic leader in the auto industry, is being investigated after a whistleblower within Nissan, the Japanese automaker, alleged he vastly understated his compensation on securities filings. He has been in detention since Nov. 19, when he was arrested on his private jet soon after landing at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.
Ghosn, who forged the alliance as a groundbreaking industry model for sharing technology and cost savings, has yet to be charged. But the Nissan board voted unanimously to fire him as chairman last week. Mitsubishi Motors, a Japanese automaker that joined the alliance in 2016, removed him as its chairman Monday.
Greg Kelly, Ghosn’s former chief of staff and a Nissan board member, who was arrested at the same time, will also be detained for 10 more days. A former head of human resources and an American, Kelly has been described by the company as a “mastermind” of the alleged financial wrongdoing. Both men were in Tokyo for a board meeting.
Fees by airlines add $93 billion
Airlines in the U.S. and Europe led the world’s carriers in collecting a total of $92.9 billion from extra charges to check bags, upgrade seats and change reservations, among other services that once were included in the price of a flight.
The “ancillary revenue” projected for 2018 is expected to be 13 percent higher than the $82.2 billion collected by carriers last year, according to a study by IdeaWorks Co., a Wisconsin-based airline consultant. Such revenue includes the sale of miles and other services to banks to distribute to loyalty reward program members.
Total revenue may surge in the next few years when airlines in China – the world’s most populous nation – are expected to adopt the U.S. and European tactics of charging passengers fees for extra services and upgrades, said Jay Sorensen, president of IdeaWorks.
“They are very nervous about it but are realizing that there is tremendous revenue gain to be had,” he said of China, where the number of airline passengers has more than tripled in the last decade.
In the U.S. and Europe, one reason for the increase in fees and extra revenue in the last year is the growing popularity of the no-frill tickets known as “basic economy” fares, which don’t come with the option to check a bag or reserve a seat. Those cost extra.
Facebook exec orders probe of George Soros
Facebook said its No. 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, asked staff to investigate whether billionaire philanthropist George Soros, in calling the company a “menace,” had financial motivations against it.
This revelation follows prior disclosures that the company had done opposition research on him.
Friday’s statement from Facebook is in response to a New York Times article that describes Sandberg asking Facebook staff to look into Soros’ financial interests in speaking out against the company. Soros called Facebook a “menace to society” in a January speech.
Facebook said the company was already researching Soros when Sandberg sent an email asking if Soros had shorted Facebook stock. Shorting a stock is essentially taking a bet it will decline.
Soros’s Open Society Foundations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
In a Thanksgiving eve post, outgoing executive Elliot Schrage took the blame for hiring the public relations firm doing opposition research on critics.