All my life I’ve heard the sales pitch “buy one, get one free!” but only recently have I seen this re-expressed in acronym form as BOGO.
Has it been around for awhile and I just didn’t notice it, or is it relatively new?
I’ve noticed it for some moderate number of years (i.e. I don’t know how long, more than a few months, less than 20 years).
However, be cautious and read the whole offer. Sometimes there are variations where the 2nd item is not free, like BOGO 1/2 off.
I’ve seen it used for at least 30 years, going back into the 1990s, so definitely not new.
Speaking in the UK, I’ve seen it more commonly as BOGOF, which always made more sense to me. Buy one, get one? Well, yes, that’s how buying things is supposed to work; if you bought one and didn’t get one you’d be a bit annoyed.
Yeah, “buy one, get one” leaves a lot of room for what the deal on that second item is.
To address OP, I’ve been using that phrase at least 20 years, but for a long time it was just internal shorthand as we discussed retail promotions. A conversation in the halls might have gone, “We’re gonna go two facing in the whole vertical until we endcap at the end of Q2, then we’ll BOGO the remainder and and do a keep reward for what’s left.”
Like @Pork_Rind , I’m pretty sure I was using it as an acronym before I ever saw a store do it.
I first saw the phrase working in online retail twenty years ago.
I’ve seen grocery store ads where in addition to using BOGO it would also include “items ring up at half price”, just to clarify that you did not necessarily have to buy two in order to get the deal.
The same store also used to sell things at “Buy two, get three free”, where the ad specified that you could get five of the item for the price of two. It’s been a long time since they’ve done that, though.
Yes, for me it was Payless Shoes, they popularized BOGO in the 90s.
Eta: actually, while the ads date back that far, it may have been in the late aughts when they shortened their slogan to just BOGO.
I’ve seen ‘BOGO’ for probably fewer than 25 years. Before that, people just said ‘Buy on, get one free!’
BOGO doesn’t really make sense. I mean if I buy one item, and I get that one item, I’ve bought one and received one; not two.
I found random uses of “BOGO” as far back as 1981, but it seemed to start picking up steam in the 1990s. By 2000, it had arriven.
Seems relatively new to me, too – maybe it took some time to become popular in the NY area?
Definitely not. I grew up on Long Island, have lived in NYC for over 20 years and I’ve heard BOGO forever. I for sure remember seeing it in Payless shoe stores in the 1990s/early 2000s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIyg08vl1Xk
Here’s a commercial from 2004 showing the use of the phrase. I don’t know why the video isn’t posting correctly.
I guess I never shopped at Payless.
Which really should be BOGOHO, IMHO.
Like most acronyms, it is shorthand for a commonly-used phrase; by itself it is only intended as a trigger to thought, and may not represent every word in the phrase.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary cites it as early as 1983, but it doesn’t say where it’s from, unhelpfully.
I remember the “BOGO” commercials from Payless in the 90s, just as @Eyebrows_0f_Doom posted. That was my first time seeing or hearing it.
I -think- my first experience with the term as a shopper was indeed late 1990’s with Payless, with it becoming common in grocery stores 5-10 ish years later with loyalty cards and so forth. IIRC, the common phrase prior to that was “2-for-1” sales.
I also remember hating it… Thinking, “What is this stupid BOGO thing, sounds like they’re talking about boogers or bongos.” I was annoyed by it.
Around 30 years later, we are now talking about the origins of the phrase. Sheesh.
:sigh:
From 1981, G.D. Ritzy’s in Columbus, OH.
"Simply clip out the picture above, bring it and your appetite to G.D. Ritzy’s, and when you buy one coney, we’ll trade you the picture for a second coney absolutely FREE! We call it “Bogo,” “Buy one, get one.”
The Columbus Dispatch, August 12, 1981
Again, there are other random sightings thru the 1980s, but 1981 was as far back as I could push it on short notice.