I bought some clothes at a well-known retailer over the weekend. They had a really big sale and did a great job promoting it inside the store. Afterwards, I noticed that my bag even had “Sale” written on it in huge letters. While this serves as a nice reminder to me about the event, they’re missing an opportunity to use the same bag as an advertising tool for attracting more customers.

In particular, the bag design had two major issues. First, the store name was rather small and used a low-contrast color. Second and most importantly, there was no mention of the nature of the sale or when it ends. Without this information, a prospective customer would have no way of telling if the sale was at a store they like, and if it’s still running.

Fixing the bag design would be easy. Keep “Sale” in big letters. Then, add the store name and logo in a large, legible fashion. Finally, add a description of the sale itself, e.g. “Save up to 40% through October 5”. By making these changes, the retailer would turn every customer into a walking billboard to help promote the sale event, with virtually zero incremental cost.