Basic Trope: Splitting up the cost of an expensive item into smaller amounts.
- Straight: Ads for the $200 ACME Super Washing Machine say that you can have it for just four easy payments of $50.
- Exaggerated: "Just four easy payments of $50! Which equals eight easy payments of $25! Which equals a hundred easy payments of $2, and you certainly have $2, don't you?"
- Downplayed: Next to the price, there's images of a few smaller common products people usually buy, suggesting that this item costs an amount you usually pay every day.
- Justified: Truth in Television.
- Inverted: When you buy a monthly ACME Super Gym Membership, the upfront price is a combined total of $50 times the amount of months in the rest of your life expectancy, rather than being able to renew on a monthly basis.
- Subverted: "Look, you just can't pay for the ACME Super Washing Machine as if it were paying a mortgage for a house. $200 dollars, upfront."
- Double Subverted: This loses ACME consumers and thus revenue. They change their minds. "Okay, fine, you can pay it in four easy payments of just $50!"
- Parodied: There are four easy payments, and one that's really complicated to make.
- Zig-Zagged: ACME can't make their minds up about whether or not the ACME Super Washing Machine should be paid in four easy payments of $50 or in one full payment of $200.
- Averted: The ad states the product's full price upfront.
- Enforced: "People might not buy it if we say the price upfront. Let's say they're just paying a smaller amount a couple of times."
- Lampshaded: "Four easy payments of $50? I'm just paying 200 dollars, then."
- Invoked: The ad executives suggest that the product's full price be split up into smaller amounts.
- Exploited: The advertisers hope that viewers will latch onto the "payment" price rather than the full one, and assume they're getting a good deal.
- Defied: Truth in advertising laws require that the product's full price be stated upfront.
- Discussed: "Do you think it's really as cheap as they say it is?" "No, didn't they say there were multiple payments?"
- Conversed: "It's kinda like those ads that say you can buy something for five easy payments of $15 or something."
You can get your own Payment Plan Pitch for less than a cup of coffee a day!
