Fritinancy

New writing on Medium: An F for "effortless"

Effortless style, effortless meditation, effortless cash flow, effortless HR, effortless entertaining, effortless change: If it’s worth doing, we’re being told, it’s worth doing with as little effort as possible.

A small sampling of the dozens of “effortless” brands and book titles that have multiplied over the last 20 or so years

In my latest story for Medium, “Against Effortlessness,” I investigate the buzzword and compare it with “We Try Harder,” Avis’s long-running slogan that made a virtue of effort. And I find evidence that the effortless tide may be turning. Read the story, clap (up to 50 times!) if you like it, and sign up for Medium to read more from me and other writers. It’s worth the effort!

 

From the archives: Big Pink

Originally published on October 20, 2011 and republished here in honor of breast cancer awareness month and in memory of Barbara Ehrenreich, who died on September 1, 2022. I’ve removed some defunct links and updated others. Update: the NFL ended its pink-themed breast-cancer campaign in 2018.

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Cheeky little messages

Here’s a trend I’ve been tracking: tiny bits of marketing copy in unexpected places—garment labels, the undersides of container lids, inside shipping boxes. What makes these messages noteworthy is their tone: either a cheeky wink or a scrap of fortune-cookie wisdom.

Here’s an example of the fortune-cookie style.

“My life is a picture of my mind”: label on a top by Flax (a brand name that is also a generic fiber name—confusing!). I have no idea what this means.

 

And here’s another.

“Let every space fulfill its true potential”: inside the package of an Elfa file cart.

 

And here’s one of the cheeky-perky messages.

“Let’s do this again sometime”: inside the wrapper of a Honey Mama’s tangerine-tahini chocolate bar (which, btw, is crazy-delicious and also crazy-expensive).

 

January linkfest

This month I listened to At the Strangers’ Gate (2017) written and narrated by Adam Gopnik, one of my favorite New Yorker writers. (His latest New Yorker essay is about two new biographies of Buster Keaton, one of which—Camera Man, by Dana Stevens—I’ve just begun to read.)

At the Strangers’ Gate covers the 1980s, when Gopnik and his new bride arrived in Manhattan from Montreal and he began his writing career. It’s a decade I’ve been thinking about a lot lately (AIDS, Reagan, Madonna, Bonfire of the Vanities), and Gopnik evokes it with keen observations, especially about the art and literary scenes. You can skip directly to Chapter 9, “Writing,” for Gopnik’s insights into the differences, and occasional overlaps, between those scenes. Here he is on art, writing, and money:

Art world paydays made book world paydays look like no paydays at all. Visual artists hunted for golden tickets, and when they got one, they were set. Good pictures in the art market—a market that has never stopped booming in all the years since—buy estates in the Hamptons. Even large royalties in the literary world (the handful—no, fingerful—of truly “commercial” writers aside) bought small apartments in the upper reaches of West End Avenue, and then in Park Slope—no small or bad thing, but not the same thing.

Gopnik is the rare author who’s also an outstanding narrator; his slightly Canadian inflections and wry line readings make this audiobook a joy. But it’s also a book I want to own in print, on paper, between covers.

August linkfest

The Ohio State University definitely wants you to associate it with the definite article: The institution has applied for trademark protection for THE for use on shirts and hats. (h/t Alex Johnson)

Don’t look so surprised, says trademark lawyer Ed Timberlake.

In case anybody's curious:

THE

is already a registered trademark
(for cell phone battery chargers)https://t.co/ZFrC8ZUuEN#trademarks pic.twitter.com/NpmUxrq7pW

— Trademarks Are Magic (@TimberlakeLaw) August 14, 2019

Meanwhile, the University OF Michigan would also like a word. 

™ pic.twitter.com/bx2vTBUtst

— University of Michigan (@UMich) August 14, 2019

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September linkfest

Mountain Dew, the neon-yellow-green soft drink brand owned by PepsiCo, evidently failed to consult anyone in Scotland before it introduced its new ad slogan, “Epic thrills start with a chug.” If it had, it would have learned that chug is Scottish slang for masturbate. (Jelisa Castrodale for Vice, via Language Log)

 

That word: It does not mean what you think it means. Not in Scotland, anyway. (Via @jaysebro)

November linkfest

Warning: more politics than usual this month, although many of the links have have a language-y angle.

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Post-truth is Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2016. The word, an adjective, means “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”; it rose to prominence this year during the UK’s Brexit vote and the US presidential election. Related: an interview with Oxford English Dictionary editor-in-chief Michael Proffitt on post-truth and secrets of the dictionary trade. (It’s not uncommon, he says, for a new OED lexicographer to be given a “rude word” to define.) Hat tip for both links: Jesse Sheidlower.

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Marketers rethink how to talk to consumers in a post-truth world, where “facts and reason matter less than they expected — a counterintuitive discovery in the age of information.”

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Posted without comment pic.twitter.com/SrVoCpTvtv

— SF Book Club, London (@SFbookclub) November 14, 2016

Word of the Week: Limerence

Limerence: “The state of being romantically infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship.” (Oxford English Dictionary)

Word of the Week: Preawareness

Preawareness: Also pre-awareness. Movie-business jargon for an audience’s sense of comfortable familiarity with a concept, a brand, or a series, thus all but guaranteeing box-office success.

From a 2010 post on the screenwriting blog Go into the Story:

Why the fixation with pre-awareness titles / pre-branded brands?

* Because consumers will already know a preexisting brand, it makes the studio’s job easier to get consumers’ attention when marketing the movie

* If preexisting title is a nostalgia brand for Gen X (e.g., Transformers) or Baby Boomers (e.g, Battleship), that widens the target audience beyond adolescent and young adult males

* Automatic merchandising tie-in to preexisting brand offers expanded revenue stream

In other words, a pre-awareness title can feel more like a sure thing than an untested original screenplay.

Preawareness is “the enemy of originality,” writes film producer Lynda Obst in her 2013 book, Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business, and films without preawareness “are the endangered species of the movie business.” 

Christopher Nolan’s Inception, released by Warner Bros. [in 2010], based on an original script by Nolan, is one such film that many in the industry doubted would open at the time, as it had no famous title or comic-book hero to hang its hat on. But it opened liked gangbusters due to a brilliant marketing campaign. This is why people like Warner Bros. president of worldwide marketing Sue Kroll are the new Hollywood stars.

“[T]here is good news for Moses and Noah fans,” wrote a New York Times book reviewer in her brief review of Obst’s book: “Hollywood has recently realized that Bible stories have ­preawareness.”

Watch Obst tell a story about how preawareness works (sorry, video wouldn’t embed).

The earliest citations I found for this marketing sense of “pre-awareness” are from 2009. This one is from a November 17, 2009, post on the Adaddinsane blog, which is written by an anonymous web developer and screenwriter in London:

“Pre-awareness” is the movie industry buzzword it’s fashionable for writers to hate. It’s the word that gives us endless sequels, remakes (“re-imaginings”) and adaptations, and an apparent fear of original ideas.

There is an ordinary word that covers the concept: familiarity.

Pre-awareness is also invoked in other types of marketing, as in a 2013 Marketo campaign for “The Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation”:

Launching a pre-awareness campaign would help us build buzz around the release of our guide as well as generate new leads prior to the launch.

Other senses of “pre-awareness” have been around for nearly a century. Google Books led me to a 1917 philosophy book, Mind by Basil Blackwell, that includes several citations. Here’s one:

Thus on lifting a cup of coffee to our lips we have pre-awareness of the coming taste before the taste-receptors are stimulated.

World Capitals

For reasons best left undisclosed*, I recently found myself looking up facts about California cities. I wasn’t searching for nicknames or mottoes, but somehow I ended up on Wikipedia’s List of City Nicknames in California, and … well, there went the afternoon.

The list doesn’t include one city nickname I’ve always liked: Manteca, in Central California, is known as Fat City. (Manteca is Spanish for “cooking fat.”) But it does contain plenty of nuggets, many of them new to me (a California native). I learned, for example, that Chatsworth, in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, is sometimes called San Pornando, and that San Francisco has more nicknames (ten) than any other California city.

Then there are all the “X of the world” cities and towns. A lot of them.

I’d known, of course, that Castroville is the Artichoke Center of the World and that Gilroy is the Garlic Capital of the World; indeed, I’ve attended the Artichoke Festival and the Garlic Festival. But some of the other world capitals surprised me:

Auburn: Endurance Capital of the World. (The Sierra foothills city, about 50 miles east of Sacramento on I-80, is “home to some of the most challenging and historic endurance events on the planet.”)

Bishop: Mule Packer Capital of the World.

Chico: Almond Capital of the World.

Fallbrook: Avocado Capital of the World and Raisin Capital of the World. (But also see Selma, below.)

Forestville: Poison Oak Capital of the World. (Hey, I’ve been to Forestville. It ain’t that bad!)

Holtville: Carrot Capital of the World. (I had to look up Holtville on a map. It’s a town of about 6,000 in Imperial County, about 10 miles east of El Centro.)

Indio: Date Capital of the World. (I have fond memories of spring vacations in Indio. It’s in the hot, dry Coachella Valley, near Palm Springs on the map but worlds away in style. We’d always stop at Shields Date Gardens to order date shakes and watch a grainy black-and-white documentary called The Romance and Sex Life of the Date.)

Shields Date Gardens, via Canuck Rennsau’s Flickr stream.

 

Lodi: Tokay Grape Capital of the World and Zinfandel Capital of the World.

McCloud: Blackberry Capital of the World. (Really? Well, it’s a nice little town up near the Oregon border in the spectacular Siskiyou Mountains. Worth a detour.)

Oakdale: Cowboy Capital of the World. (Don’t tell Bandera, Texas.)

Oxnard: Lima Bean Capital of the World and Strawberry Capital of the World. (Watch out, Watsonville!)

Pearsonville: Hubcap Capital of the World. (Pearsonville, pop. 17, is home to at least one very enthusiastic resident.)

Salinas: Lettuce Capital of the World.

Selma: Raisin Capital of the World. (Yes, there’s a Selma in California.)

Tulelake: Horseradish Capital of the World. (Sadly, the horseradish industry is shrinking.)

Watsonville: Strawberry Capital of the World. (Don’t tell Oxnard.)

Willow Creek: Bigfoot Capital of the world. (Had to look this one up, too. It’s in Humboldt County, near the Trinity River. Population about 1,000.)

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I understand the inclination toward superlatives, but where city mottoes are concerned, I prefer the poetic: Modesto’s sublime “Water Wealth Contentment Health,” Del Mar’s much-imitated “Where the Turf Meets the Surf,” Redwood City’s briskly reassuring “Climate Best by Government Test.”

I’m drawn to dark mottoes, too, like San Francisco’s “The City That Waits to Die.” But no California city beats Colma, just south of San Francisco, which Wikipedia reminds us was “founded as a necropolis in 1924.” One of Colma’s mottoes is “It’s Good to Be Alive in Colma”; it’s also known as “The City of the Silent” and as “The City That Waits for ‘The City That Waits to Die’ to Die.”

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* Because they’re boring.