If your tweet today mentions AIDS, the color of your text will be red, Kudos, Twitter, for marketing a campaign of awareness through colored fonts.
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Shoulda been "fewer" calories
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Boy: Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?
Mr. Owl: Let's find out. A One... A.two-HOO...A three..
(crunch sound effect)
Mr. Owl: A Three!
This bothered me immensely when I was a child. Granted the narrator tacitly acknowledges that Mr. Owl didn't really answer the question, but I wanted to see him tarred and feathered (or tarred and skinned? He's a bird, so he's already feathered) and exposed for the fraud he is.
But to answer the question, here's Wikipedia:
Three independent research studies have been carried out to determine the answer. Engineering students at Purdue University devised a "licking machine" that showed an average of 364 licks are needed to get to the center. Using 20 human volunteers, the figure was 252. A doctoral student at the University of Michigan created another licking machine and came up with an average of 411 licks.
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That gal who received the flowers wasn't unattractive--at least she received flowers.
In the first five advertisements, there were three instances of broken glass--this trend of broken glass seemed constant throughout the evening, and it wasn't limited to one product, either--there was:
- The Budweiser ad where the guy who suggests giving up free beer for board meetings.
- The Audi ad where Jason Statham breaks a bunch of stuff w/ his car.
- The Doritos ad where the guy shatters the vending machine.
The ads also seemed especially violent, whether it was violence to a tribute to Mean Joe Green, anyone drinking Pepsi, or biz-cas koala.
What is the significance of the Clydesdale?
"Did they just advertise porn?"
Apparently the Axis powers are reunited and working to eradicate the Hyundai.
"Did they just show a rhinoceros's anus?"
The only one whose product we could remember without looking up: MILLER HI-LIFE!
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The local post office has had this poster on display for years, and every time we visit, we notice it.
But we're still not sure what the message is.
We looked the image up online, and apparently it's to warn you--or at least make you aware--of identity theft.
Okay, the prominent "IDENTITY THEFT" in the condensed font does the job nicely enough, but what draws our attention is the sketchy, Vin-Diesel-looking guy glaring at us. Then we notice that he's pasting his image on top of a woman. We've never stolen anyone's identity, but if we were going to, we'd probably steal from someone, oh, of the same gender. (We also wouldn't choose the image that makes us look like the kind of dude who'd steal a woman's identity.)
A quick glance at our driver's license reveals that sex comes right after date of birth on the ID info, so it's not like that discrepancy is tough to spot. Women, in contrast to men, also tend to have womanly names, like Bertha or Deidre. Likewise, we don't imagine Vin Diesel's height and weight to be in any way similar to the woman's whose identity he's stealing--for the record, we're pretty sure it's Ricki Lake.
And finally, shouldn't Ricki Lake be stealing Vin Diesel's identity?
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We hadn't heard of Bud's "Real Men of Genius" ad campaign until today, but we're pleasantly surprised to find ourselves among them:
MR. PARANOID OF THE OCEAN GUY
Bud Light Presents Real Men of Genius
(Real Men of Genius)
Today we salute you Mr. Paranoid of the Ocean Guy
(Mr. Paranoid of the Ocean Guy)
Wind surfing, para-sailing, body boarding.. Not you.. you prefer activities like flailing, shivering, and whimpering
(Please don't judge me)
Bravely you step into the water, one wrong move and you could be pinched to death by a hermit crab
(Tell my wife I love her)
Was that a piece of seaweed that brushed against your leg? Or a giant man eating eel?
(Ooooooooh)
So crack open an ice cold Bud Light O' swimmerous minimus, because someone has to man those shallow waters, and that someone is you
(Mr. Paranoid of the Ocean Guy)
FACT:
Here's the complete
list.
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Can you see the arrow?
Exactly.
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Test your m-editor-dle by spotting the errors:
1. Hosting a family gathering in France also meant sampling the local cuisine.
2. Ducks Unlimited is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of wetlands and associated upland habitats for waterfowl, other wildlife, and people.
3. Visit our seller on the Web at www.amazon.com
4. Request a free issue today! If you’re not satisfied, just write "cancel" on the bill, and the issue is yours to keep! If you want more of our [publication], simply fill out the billing form--just $19.99 for six issues, and we’ll include your free issue as part of the subscription.
Highlight to see answers.
1. The cheese is Stilton, an English, not a French cheese.
2. The Ducks Unlimited logo is flipped.
3. The link is broken.
4. If the sample issue is included in the subscription, it's not "free."
What do all these have in common? They're all corrections we've made. Some, like the cheese, are pretty pedantic while others, such as a broken (or mistyped) link and a flipped picture can make a big difference--especially if they're advertisements. If you just plunked down several hundred dollars for an ad placement, wouldn't you want it to be perfect?
These may seem nit-picky, but if money's involved, they're going to be the first things a good editor or proofer will look for. And since we're paid to notice them, they're going to leap out at us while most normal people overlook.
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We: [Looking at an ad] This is just disturbing.
Bad-Ass George: Huh, low-cal, fat-free? Is there any dairy?
We: The cow has lipstick!
Bad-Ass George: I didn't notice.
We: Sex and anthropomorphizing are a creepy mix.
Bad-Ass George: [Creepily] I kinda like it...
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We do a lot of advertising at our company, particularly with direct mailings. Those nice glossy campaign flyers that've been filling up your mailbox the last few months? Those are direct mailings.
And usually ours are nice and glossy, too. With nice copy written and/or edited by yours truly and pretty pictures and so on.
We're on the lookout for new ways to make our DMs more appealing, which for us usually means writing nicer copy and using prettier pictures. Other DMs can be a bit nastier, such as the piece we received from Charter this morning that arrived in a threatening envelope marked with the even-more-threatening message Open Immediately and written in an ominous bold-condensed font. Was something wrong? Was a payment overdo? Worse, had someone hacked our account? We ripped it open. It was an ad.
The ad's certainly effective, because we were spooked into opening the envelope, but upon reading its contents and realizing it was an ad, we were pretty incensed, so we threw it in the trash.
Maybe the offer was really good, maybe it would have saved us a lot of money on our bills, but we didn't like being fooled, so we didn't bother to find out. And we imagine this is the reaction most people would have.
So this is a pretty bad ad campaign. Charter's use of intimidation is a clever way of getting the recipient to open the envelope, which is the biggie when you're running a DM campaign that uses envelopes (as opposed to flyers like the ones that've been filling up your mailbox the last few months), but it's a cheap trick, and once we understood that we were in no mood to read the ad.
But let's back up; we just wrote, "this is a pretty bad ad campaign"--that's a moral judgment; the ad itself is very effective. We also wrote, "we were in no mood to read the ad"--is anyone ever in the mood to read an ad?
It stuck in our mind; it doesn't matter how we felt when we saw it--we remembered it, that's what's important. In fact, it stuck with us so bad we dedicated an entire post to it. More to the point, we've already fished it from the trash.
Anyone out there have any stick-in-the-mind ads to share?
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Whose advertising campaigns are more fascinating than the fast food industry's? A quick glance at this slogan database and you’re probably imaging a sultry chorus singing in the background while the camera zooms slowly in upon the image of cardiac-arrestially inducing deliciousness.
But we’re more interested in the wording of the slogan.
Take Subway’s: Subway. Eat fresh.
Terse, but clever—it says a lot in only three words. "Subway" tells you the name of the business; "Eat," the kind of business; and "fresh," the quality of the eats.
"Eat fresh" also implies that the eats are healthier than other fast-food chains, while "Subway" connotes—sandwiches.
The slogan has a nice, pounding meter to it, too—especially the way they say it in the advertisements. "Subway" is generally pronounced with the stress on the first syllable—subway—but the announcer(s)/chorus breaks the word up to stress each syllable—sub…way. They stress "Eat fresh" similarly—eat...fresh—so the slogan is a series of four little verbal jabs.
But while Subway maintains a fresh and clean image, other fast-food chains are more lurid. Hotdoggists WindMill boast that their wieners are "Bigger! Better!"; Jack-in-the-Box doesn't "Make It Until you Order It"; Kentucky-Fried Chicken's wings, thighs, and breasts are, of course, "Finger-Lickin' Good!"
Of these three, Kentucky-Fried is easily the market leader and its entendre the most blatant. Quiznos's tender "Mmm...Toasty," A&W's patriotic "All-American Food," and Hardee's nuturing "Come on Home" can't even compete. The virtuous advertisers are all second-rate—and don't think quality of food is the key ingredient; we'd rather eat at any of these three than KFC (then again, the last time we were at KFC, we ordered the gizzards; they took a half hour to prepare and were f@#!ing awful).
But none of these chains ranks with the burger joints, whose advertisements are waaayyyy more suggestive:
Burger King: "Have It Your Way"; "Your Way, Right Away"; "You're the Boss"; "The Fire's Ready"; "Best Food for Fast Times"; "Home of the Whopper."
Wendy's: "It's Better Here"; "Do What Tastes Right"; "Where's the Beef?"
McDonald's—pick one.
Add to this Whitecastle's "What You Crave," and we feel the point is obvious.
But we're curious as to why the burger joints' entendres (including Jack-in-the-Box) connote prostitution. We won't go into revenues here, but we've researched it, and trust us: Burger Joints Tower over the other fast foods, so the heaviest competition is amongst themselves, if the heaviest competition is amongst themselves, we can expect them to have the best advertisers, if they hire the best advertisers, we can expect their advertisements to appeal to the most people, if they appeal to the most people, then we can conclude that most people equate food with prostitution.
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We [Pointing to a pull quote in a recent article]: Should “X-ray” be capitalized?
Boss2: I always capitalize it when it’s a noun; lowercase when it’s a verb.
We: Ah, like “Xerox”: Named after a company, but lowercased when it’s a verb.
Boss2: Yeah, like “Thermos.”
We: “Thermos” is a verb?
Boss2: No, but it’s been in usage for so long that it’s always spelled lowercase. It refers to a vacuum-sealed jug.
We: Ah. So how long will it take “Googled it” and “Photoshopped it” to become lowercase verbs?
Who doesn't enjoy verbing words? Especially when the verbed nouns are something you especially enjoy using, such as Google or Photoshop--one would think it's very high praise.
Which is why we were surprised to read that many companies are against verbualizing their products. Take, for example, this entry on Wikipedia.org's page on Xerox:
"...the company does not condone such uses of its trademark, and is particularly concerned about the ongoing use of Xerox as a verb as this places the trademark in danger of being declared a generic word by the courts. The company is engaged in an ongoing advertising and media campaign to convince the public that Xerox should not be used as a verb."
Google isn't happy with their name being verbed either:
"Search engine giant Google, known for its mantra "don't be evil", has fired off a series of legal letters to media organisations, warning them against using its name as a verb. "
"In June, Google won a place in the Oxford English Dictionary, while "to google", with a lower case "g", was included last month in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, America's leading reference book." --The Independent
Adobe even has its own page on regarding the proper and improper uses of "photoshopped."
On the one hand, it must be nice to have such brand recognition; on the other, too much popularity can kill the brand?
Copyrights can have some pretty bizarre consequences. No one, save, maybe, an employee of Adobe Systems or some moron who believes it his civic duty, is going to stop using "photoshopped," so campaigning for everyone to do so seems pretty futile. What would everyone gain? If it were more convenient to say, "The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software" instead of, "The image was photoshopped," people would be saying the former. (And how would one say, "®"?) And certainly no one is going to do so purely out of goodwill--when has the mass ever felt charitable toward a powerful corporation?
Dually interesting is how some brands have tried to avoid genericide--one response is coining their own verbs to describe an action performed by/with the brand-named product. We're not sure how successful this method of advertising has been (what do you do if someone steals your verb?), but we do recall an example of it being the "Are you 'jellin''?" ads put out by that shoe (inner-sole?) company.
Like it or not, language is going to win this battle. No corporation has the resources to police the use of their brand names. For Heaven's sake, when was the last time (or ever time) someone was busted for recording a television show? And speaking is much easier than fiddling with the VCR.
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