Fritinancy

Scratch That

Three more ads that reach for a home run by striking out:

 

“Politics Philosophy Culture Talking Heads Experts”

Boston Review ad on the Los Angeles Review of Books home page (may be gone by now).

 

Buick Regal GS: From “Buick” to “Quick” … and from clear to confusing. Is there a quarterback in the picture?

 

“Things money can’t buy: love happiness time.”

San Francisco MUNI bus ad for ExecSF.com, a $25-an-hour personal-assistant service. ExecSF.com is not to be confused with ExecSF.org, the website for Executives Without Borders, “the bridge between those in the non-profit world and those in the business world.”

More strikeout ads here.

UPDATE: Just after I published this post I saw this tweet from Anna Holmes:

Fix These Ads, Please

Here’s a slightly belated quiz in honor of National Punctuation Day. What’s missing from each of these national ads?

 

Email promotion for the Pizza Hut P’Zolo.

 

Magazine ad for Crest Pro-Health “clinical” rinse and toothpaste.

 

 

If you said “the comma of direct address” – also known as “the Donner Party comma” – give yourself a standing ovation, sir or madam.

The P’Zolo headline needs a comma after “YA” to make it clear that the word is slang for “you” and not the librarian’s abbreviation for “young adult.” The Crest headline needs a comma after “hike” to avoid suggesting that the reader deserves a wall-mountable award for going the distance on the Appalachian Trail. (Better layout would help, too: the idiomatic “take a hike” shouldn’t be broken up over two lines.)

Who’s at fault? Maybe the copywriter; maybe the proofreader, if there was one. Most likely, a comma-averse art director decreed that an extra punctuation mark would disturb the Platonic perfection of his design. I speak from experience: I’ve had many frustrating conversations with designers and art directors who arbitrarily removed correct and necessary punctuation “because it looked funny.” To which I say: Stick to pictures, bub.

Notes from UN-derground

In retail and design, the un also rises.

Exhibit A: Unemployee.

 

“Eno, 28, non-actor from the U.S.”

 

“Unemployee of the Year” is a worldwide contest open to unemployed people age 18 to 30. The contest is part of Benetton’s #UNHATE campaign, which began last year with photos of world leaders kissing. Read more at AdFreak.

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Exhibit B: Uncrate.

 

Uncrate calls itself “the leading buyer’s guide for men.”

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Exhibit C: Unbeige.

 

Unbeige is a MediaBistro blog “where designers read about design.”

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Exhibit D: Uniqlo.

I’m being mischievous with this one — Uniqlo isn’t really an “un.” The low-price, high-quality Japanese retail chain’s name comes from “unique clothing warehouse” and is pronounced “you-nee-klo” in English and “you-nee-koo-ro” in Japanese.

The company is Japan’s leading retailer in terms of sales and profits. The first Uniqlo store opened in Hiroshima in 1985; the first U.S. stores opened in 2005 in New Jersey, but they performed poorly and were shut down. A year later, Uniqlo came back with a 36,000-square-foot store in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, and the company has grown its U.S. presence steadily ever since. The three-story, 29,000-square-foot San Francisco store, opening October 5, will be the chain’s first West Coast location.

According to a recent company profile in the Wall Street Journal, Uniqlo founder Tadashi Yanai is decidedly un-Japanese in his outspoken emphasis on entrepreneurialism. He has even declared English to be Uniqlo’s official corporate language.

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Read my June 2012 post about the “un” ad campaign for the Smart “un-car.” Also see Ben Zimmer’s 2009 New York Times column about “unfollow,” “unfriend,” “unconference,” and other 21st-century un-isms.

 

 

Word of the Week: Lucky Ducky

Lucky ducky: An American who pays no federal income tax because his or her income level falls below the tax line after deductions and credits.

Lucky ducky was first used in this sense in “The Non-Taxpaying Class,” a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published November 20, 2002:

The actual number of people filing without paying comes to 16 million (after subtracting those getting earned income tax credits and thus, presumably, still somewhat sensitive to tax rates). So almost 13% of all workers have no tax liability and so are indifferent to income tax rates. And that doesn't include another 16.5 million who have some income but don't file at all.

Who are these lucky duckies? They are the beneficiaries of tax policies that have expanded the personal exemption and standard deduction and targeted certain voter groups by introducing a welter of tax credits for things like child care and education. When these escape hatches are figured against income, the result is either a zero liability or a liability that represents a tiny percentage of income.

(Emphasis added.)

The following month, Jonathan Chait parried in The New Republic that the WSJ editorial was based on “a giant factual inaccuracy—it completely ignores sales and excise taxes, which consume a huge share of the working poor's income.” He went on:

When I try to visualize the editorial meeting that produced this bit of diabolical inspiration, I imagine one of the more rational staffers—maybe Dorothy Rabinowitz—tentatively raising her hand and asking, “Isn't that idea a bit, you know, immoral?” Then Robert Bartley or Paul Gigot would emit a deep, sinister laugh and press a hidden button, depositing the unfortunate staffer into a tank of piranhas.

Cartoonist and political commentator Ruben Bolling seized on the Wall Street Journal’s language to introduce a new character, “Lucky Ducky,” to his long-running comic strip, “Tom the Dancing Bug.” In a 2003 strip that reran earlier this month, Lucky Ducky’s plutocratic nemesis, Hollingsworth Hound, fumes that because Lucky Ducky is in jail, he’s “eating a square meal on my dime.”

 

In the decade since its coinage, lucky ducky “has outlived its original use to become a part of the informal terminology used in the tax reform debate in the United States,” according to a Wikipedia entry. It was resurrected after last week’s release of secretly filmed video of a Mitt Romney fundraiser in which the Republican candidate dismissed “47 percent” of Americans as “people who pay no income tax” who are “dependent on government” and will vote for Obama “no matter what.”

Economist Paul Krugman has devoted several posts in his New York Times blog, The Conscience of a Liberal, to the fundraiser video. A September 18 post invoked “lucky duckies,” although Romney himself never used the term:

The “lucky ducky” trope is clearly, obviously nonsense; equally obviously, it was originally created in an effort to dupe people who didn’t know better. It was and is what Orwell called “prolefeed”, junk aimed at the ignorant masses (ignorant by design), the people who are ready to believe at a moment’s notice that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

Why “lucky ducky”? The rhyme certainly helps, as does the fact that “duck” has been a term of endearment since at least 1600, when Shakespeare used it in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (“O dainty duck, o deare!”); in addition, “ducks” is a term of familiar address in British (and especially Cockney) slang. In American political slang, “lame duck” has referred to an elected official or legislative body whose term of office is nearing an end; it first appeared in print in 1910, according to Grant Barrett’s Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang.

For more animal metaphors used in American political discourse—including dog whistle, pork barrel, and vet—see my September 2008 column for the Visual Thesaurus, “Political Animals.”

A Nice Mention on "A Way With Words"

Many thanks to Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette, co-hosts of public radio’s “A Way With Words,” for mentioning my blog in their September 21 program! The segment is called “How Products Got Their Names,” and if you missed the broadcast you can listen online.

The rest of the episode—“Good Juju”—is entertaining and informative, too. It includes segments on M&Ms, Hallmark Cards, restaurant lingo, aspirin (the name), and, of course, juju. 

I wrote about how aspirin got its name about a year ago. You can read all of my “How They Got That Name” posts here.

Short Takes

Remember MEN-trepreneurs, man irons, and manllows? It’s been a while since I’ve reported on a new man-word sighting, but now Brut steps up with its Mantervention Facebook app, in which (according to AdFreak) “some guy with George Michael stubble lectures you about spending too much time on Facebook.” I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing the Mantervention movie scheduled for 2013 release is about something else.

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I have so far managed to resist the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon—although yes, I am aware there will be a movie—but a display at a local Barnes & Noble store (inner goddess! sex whisperer!) did exert a certain pull.

Fifty Shades of American Women Who Love the Book and Live the Life, the magazine, is a must for completists. (For more on “The X Whisperer,” read Jan Freeman’s recent blog post, “Whisperer Campaign,” which covers a lot of ground but doesn’t answer the question “Is a young, sadistic, cranky sex whisperer a sex whisperer-whipper-snapper?”)

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If you’ve ever worked on the creative side of advertising or marketing, you’ll laugh through your tears, or weep through your guffaws, at “A Candid Proposal from an Advertising Firm’s Creative Director,” by Andrew Gall at McSweeney’s. One of the imaginary deliverables:

A dozen made up words related to your product that will “draw consumers in.” These shall include, but not be limited to, words with the following suffixes: “-tastic,” “-tacular,” and “-riffic.” Also, while you probably already know this, I was the one who came up with the word “crumbelievable” in 2007 to describe the Keebler company’s new line of coffee cake cookies.

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And speaking of crumbelievable and similar madeupical words, Ben Zimmer pointed me to two articles in The Onion that have some fun with FritoLay: “Munchtrosity Created in Fritolayboratory” (“an evil of cheddarclysmic proportions”) and “Fritolaysia Cuts Off Chiplomatic Relations with Snakistan” (the fateful summit was held, of course, in München, Germany).

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A tiny pluglet: I’ve been using Pinterest to illustrate some of the naming trends I’ve written about here. Check out my boards: Names That End in –ly, Brand Names with Gratuitous Umlauts, and Shop at X&Y!

When to Change a Name -- and When Not to

In some ways, naming a startup is easy: you have a blank slate and nothing but potential. Renaming an established company or product can be a trickier proposition. Your customers and employees know you by the original name, and selling them on a new name can be costly, arduous, and even alienating if it isn’t done right.

That’s why it’s important to know when to undertake a renaming project and when you’re better off focusing on other business matters. Here are some guidelines and caveats.

 

A Good Year for "Bad-Ass"

Actually, it’s been a very good year for every iteration of the A-word. According to the media-news site Romenesko, which pays attention to such things, “ass” has appeared 22 times on NPR in the last year, only three times “in reference to the animal.” And there’s been little objection among booksellers to the barely taboo-avoiding title of linguist Geoffrey Nunberg’s latest book, released in August.

 

Book cover with wall of assholes.

 

The subtitle—“Assholism, the First Sixty Years”—makes it clear that Nunberg’s A-word is “asshole,” a word Nunberg says originated among American GIs during World War II and entered everyday language in the 1970s.*

I haven’t (yet) seen “asshole” in brand language, but—as noted in this space on several previous occasions—“ass” has been steadily gaining ground in the marketplace. In fact, “bad ass,” noun and adjective, has become practically a badge of brand honor.

Here, for example, is a box of Charles & Charles Washington State rosé, photographed at Berkeley Bowl Marketplace, a generally family-friendly establishment:

 

“Yes you can drink rosé and still be a bad *ss.”

 

The winery’s own website, however, compares the taste of Charles & Charles rosé to Jolly Ranchers, which seems kind of candy-ass to me.

Down in Los Angeles, there’s a food truck—excuse me, “gourmet mobile burger concept”—that puts “badass” right up front in the name: Baby’s Badass Burgers.

 

 

(Hat tip: Michael.)

Indeed, LA may want to change its acronym to “BA.” TechCrunch reported last month on an infusion of cash for online retailer Nasty Gal, whose offices are in the 213.

 

 

Nasty Gal takes its name from the album by Betty Davis, “the patron saint of badass women,” according to the About Us page.

In other news, a movie called Ass Backwards, starring Clueless’s Alicia Silverstone, is currently in post(erior)-production. The film’s writers raised more than $50,000 in funding on Kickstarter but haven’t sent updates to backers in more than 15 months, which sounds downright A-wordish.

And because if I don’t include it I’m sure to hear from several of you, here’s your Big Ass Fans mention. The company, whose logo is a donkey’s behind, is based in Lexington, Kentucky; the ad is in the September 17 issue of the New Yorker and may represent the first time “bespoke” and “ass” have appeared together in a commercial context.

 

 

Previously featured on Fritinancy: Bad Ass Booty Balm diaper ointment (“Got a bad ass in your crib?”).

 

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* I heard Nunberg talk about Ascent of the A-Word last month at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, where his interviewer was Robert J. Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule. Because the event was being taped for public-radio broadcast, both gentlemen had to sidestep actual A-words in favor of “A-word.” It was an impressive exercise in forbearance, although Nunberg did slip in a D-word.

Word of the Week: Feckless

Feckless: Ineffectual, lacking purpose or vitality; irresponsible. Originally a Scottish dialect word (along with its antonym, feckful) in which feck is a shortened form of effect. Entered English in the late 16th century; popularized by Thomas Carlyle in the early 19th century. (Carlyle, 1823: “I am so feckless at present that I have never yet had the heart to commence it.”)

Feckless was in the news last week when Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, used it to castigate President Obama’s Mideast policy in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show.

Source: Today on the Trail, September 13, 2012.

 

The feck in feckless is unrelated to the Irish feck, which, as Stan Carey explains, is a minced oath, “occupying ground between the ultra-mild expletive flip and the often taboo (but also popular) fuck.” This Irish feck is the one appropriated by FECKiN Irish Whiskey, a brand I wrote about last year. Used as recommended, 80-proof FECKiN Irish whiskey is very feckful indeed.

Check It Out

Bergdorf Goodman ad in the New York Times, September 13, 2012:

 

So here’s what I want to know:

Does “men’s shoe library” mean you can borrow a pair of shoes, wear them once, and return them?

Or is it a reference room—a hushed hall for perusing shoes?

When they organize the stock, do they use the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress system?

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More on the shoe library in the Bergdorf Goodman blog.