Payless – Palessi

In this one Payless takes the idea of a marketing prank to a new level. The discount shoe store took over a former Armani location and invited a group of 60 fashion influencers to the grand opening of Palessi, a posh shop decorated with gold mannequins and model-perfect sales assistants. The fashionista’s used descriptors like ‘elegant’ and ‘sophisticated’ and offered hundreds of dollars for Payless-shoes that usually are sold for $19.99. All of the unknowing participants were refunded their money at the end of the experiment, but the results were still hilarious and resulted in tons of free publicity.