Burt’s Bees, the natural-personal-care company, has launched güd, a new line of body, hand, and hair products, self-described as “a novel and extrasensory approach to natural beauty created for the of-the-moment woman…that’s you!”
There’s an umlaut (or dieresis) over the u in “güd,” but these aren’t Motörhead-style rock dots.
Pictured: Orange Petalooza body mist. It took me several minutes to realize that it’s petal-ooza (the oozings of petals?) and not pet-alooza, which looks like something you’d spray on an animal companion. Products are also available in Floral Cherrynova and Vanilla Flame, names that have been strenuously engineered to appeal not so much to an “of-the-moment woman” as to an 11-year-old girl.
Everything about güd is cute—make that cüte—from the URL (gudhappens.com) to the girlish lower-case name to the rollover copy (“Hey, it’s time to boogy till you just can’t boogy no more”). The About page reminds us that “the name güd actually has a smile built right in.”
OMG, it does! LOL.
Sometimes the copy is downright icky, as in this header for the body lotion section: “Skin will be wonderfully hydrated. But not so hydrated that you make a sloshing sound when you walk.” Let’s hope not.
The güd line is being sold at Walgreen’s, Target, and Ulta stores. “Or,” confides the über-chatty copy, “you could just buy whatever güd stuff you’re looking for on this very site! Aren’t the interwebs wonderful?”
Grüvy!
Wow, how patronizing. I love Burt's Bees lip balm. This new line, not so much.
Posted by: grrljock | January 10, 2012 at 01:22 PM
I know they look the same, but I think this must be an umlaut and can't be a dieresis. The dieresis is only used to separate two vowels, as in the one over the "e" in Noel, and the one the New Yorker (alone among major magazines) uses in "cooperate" and "re-elect".
Or as Wikipedia has it:
The diaeresis is used to denote the phonological phenomenon also known as diaeresis ( /daɪˈɛrɨsɨs/ dy-err-ə-səs), in which a vowel letter is not part of a digraph or diphthong. The umlaut mark ( /ˈʊmlaʊt/ uum-lowt) denotes a sound shift.
Then again the idea that it's an umlaut is weird too. Speakers of umlaut-using languages will be unable to stop thinking of this as [gyd] and it's just weird...
Posted by: Lane | January 10, 2012 at 01:45 PM
I really like Burt's stuff - I guess a name like Burt seems stodgy and so 2011 that they had to go with rabid smileys...
Posted by: tanita | January 11, 2012 at 02:42 AM
Uh ... it won't come out right if you stretch your lips in a smile. It has a pucker built in, actually. As in, I just tasted something funny.
Posted by: Diana Landau | January 12, 2012 at 08:40 AM
I'm reminded of an obscure Sluggy Freelance reference, where although the series witch draws power from the Book of E-Ville, there is a counterpart book, the Book of Güd.
Otherwise, as for the whole campaign, Ew. Or, Ü.
Posted by: Linnaeus | January 12, 2012 at 12:02 PM