We don't need no stinking bloggers!

Video display wall, Shoppers Drug Mart, Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC

Last week I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I could not take photos inside a Shoppers Drug Mart store. (I took this photo from outside the store.)

I thought the video wall was great and I wanted to take photos to share with my students. Has Shoppers missed this whole social media explosion? I can't imagine that Shoppers enacts, or even tries to enact, the same policy with the young Instagram users who form a hugely profitable slice of the firm's cosmetics business.

I can understand that a firm may wish to prevent its competition from copying the store's designs and visual merchandising. But the copying can be done with secret cameras that the retailer will never notice. The photo taken openly by a professor is the least of Shoppers' worries. And the fact that I could get almost exactly the same photo from outside the store make the entire policy ridiculous.