Fritinancy

Who's the audience for this ad?

There’s a famous saying, often attributed to American department-store pioneer John Wanamaker*, that half of what you spend on advertising is wasted—you just never know which half.

Well, here’s a lamentable, preventable example of a waste of 100 percent of a company’s ad budget.

 

New And Astonishingly Dumbfounding Advertising Mystery!

 

This bus-shelter ad is one of four in my neighborhood—four within a single one-mile stretch of not-very-grand Grand Avenue in Oakland, California. The advertiser is New York-based Naadam—or NAADAM, as it’s styled on the website. But the name has been given a strange makeover in  this bus-shelter ad, where it looks like an acronym: N.A.A.D.A.M. The all-caps line under the initialized brand name reads “ᴅᴏɴ’ᴛ ᴅᴏ ᴄᴀsʜᴍᴇʀᴇ. ɪᴛ’s ᴀᴅᴅɪᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ”

Huh?

As a couple of my puzzled Twitter followers asked, “Is ‘Cashmere’ a new street drug?”

Word of the week: Balk

I was as surprised as Language Hat (Stephen Dodson) to learn that balk may be acquiring a new meaning that’s pretty much the opposite of the traditional one. (I was not surprised, as he was, that the “l” in balk is silent; I’ve always pronounced the word that way on the very few occasions I’ve used it.)

It turns out there’s a lot about balk that’s interesting. For one thing, it’s spelled baulk in the UK. This was news to me, but not completely surprising, because after all the Brits colorfully and flavorfully insert a u in the center of a lot of words.

Pharmed out

Almost exactly ten years ago I spotted what I thought was the most embarrassing name ever attached to a beauty brand: Sophistry.

It’s still in business under that wildly inappropriate name.

 

Today, however, thanks to Twitter follower Sam C., I met the new contender for the title: Pharmaciopy.

Because science.

 

 

Word of the week: Vespertine

With the return to Standard Time on Saturday night – not a moment too soon, in my opinion – it’s pleasant and fitting to consider the lovely word vespertine, an adjective meaning “of the evening.” The root is Latin vesper, which means “evening star” (it’s related to Greek Hesperus, the personification of that star, the nighttime incarnation of Venus), and came into English in the late 14th century from French vespre (“evening” or “nightfall”). Vespers, the evening prayer service in some Catholic and Protestant denominations, originated in the early centuries of the Common Era, making it one of the oldest of Christian traditions.

Vespertine is rarely seen in normal conversation – it doesn’t show up among the 60,000 most frequently used English words – but it recently received a jolt of attention thanks to a new and much-talked-about Los Angeles restaurant called Vespertine, possibly because it serves only the evening meal. (Or maybe the chef is a fan of Björk. See below.) I say “possibly” because despite the flurry of reviews by prominent food writers, a lot about Vespertine remains a mystery, including why a 22-seat restaurant takes up all four floors of a weirdly undulating building in Culver City.

The Vespertine building, designed by Eric Owen Moss, is made of red steel meant to evoke Mars. Photo via Genius Kitchen.

Bad advertising of the Bay Area: Thumbtack

In the last two and a half years, Thumbtack, which matches customers with local service professionals, has raised $255 million in funding. If the company had spent the merest fraction of that sum on a professional copywriter with an elementary understanding of how advertising works, it could have come up with something more effective than this existential shrug of a billboard.

“We don’t know.” <Shrug> 8th and Harrison streets, San Francisco

 

It’s not that I don’t get the tiny, unconvincing joke, O Hipster Ad Agency. Nothing rhymes with orange. Haha.

Here’s the thing (and it pains me to have to point this out):

Billboards are meant to grab your attention in a split-second. They’re not supposed to be convoluted in-jokes. They’re supposed to sell.

And they’re supposed to sell your stuff. Not roses, not “this billboard,” not even florists or poets. If you’re Thumbtack, you want people who see your ad to grok the glories of Thumbtack.

At the risk of repeating myself: We don’t know? Are you effing kidding me? Your website says you’re “reshaping local economies.” You’re “getting things done.” If you don’t know, who does?

And finally: Why is the most important message – “Hire skilled pros for absolutely everything” – in the tiniest type?

A good ad should make you smile in instant recognition. It should be memorable and motivational. It should leave you with a positive impression of the advertiser.

It shouldn’t make you feel like your soul’s been sucked out of your body and sacrificed to the gods of snark.

_

Previously in Bad Advertising of the Bay Area:

• Lyft
• Salesforce
• SF Environment / Talking Is Teaching (a double feature!)
• Go Tahoe North
• Sunlee jasmine rice

 

 

 

A few strong words

Join me at Strong Language today, where I’ve published a post about a phrase in a sign that appeared on Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) last week. The sign was fake (but looked authentic); the phrase was an imperative that included a four-letter word that’s common in speech but uncommon in official pronouncements. I write about the phrase and its history – not very ancient, it turns out – and about GYST, the acronym formed from the phrase. Language-of-commerce connection: GYST is also the name of a couple of U.S. companies.

Too elliptical for you? Read the post.

Names in the news: Glixel, Binghamton Mets, Fagas Straps

Some recently encountered names that made me wonder: What were they thinking?

A Zen koan from Google

This outdoor ad is composed of simple English words, 10 of which have only one syllable. And yet it’s enigmatic nearly to the point of unintelligibility.

 

“Now goes viral, then scrambles to scale. Next means everyone goes to the launch party.”

 

And pop goes the weasel?

I spotted the sign on Van Ness Avenue, near San Francisco’s Civic Center and some distance from Google headquarters (35 miles away), Pier 48 (four miles away and the site of the Google Cloud Platform Users Conference, which begins today), or any other relevant landmark. It’s a short stroll from the ad to the symphony hall and opera house, but I doubt music aficionados are in the target demographic.

Here, for the benefit of everyone who isn’t fluent in Techlish, is my attempt at decryption:

This was never supposed to happen

And yet, somehow, it did.

Outdoor ad for Lyft. Harrison between 8th and 9th streets, San Francisco, January 30, 2016.

Squirmishing with Sarah

On Tuesday, Sarah Palin, wearing a hypnotically sparkly garment that sartorial conservatives might have impugned as inappropriate for a daytime event, delivered a 20-minute endorsement of real estate developer and former Democrat Donald J. Trump, who, as you may have heard, is running for president as a Republican in order to Make America Great Again. As the New York Times put it, in an excess of understatement, “Ms. Palin has always been a singular force on the campaign trail. But in her her years away from politics, the former Alaska governor and Senator John McCain’s Republican vice-presidential pick in 2008 seems to have spawned a whole new series of idiosyncratic expressions and unusual locutions.”

I’ll say. Here are some of the responses Ms. Palin’s “expressions and locutions” have inspired.