Ever since I entered the advertising business (several months after writing that speech for Abe Lincoln), I’ve fought to keep abreast of terminology.
In came the term throwers, hurling misunderstood words such as paradigm and misused words such as interactive. When somebody would use them we outlanders would chuckle or pretend to be unconscious.
But those words and phrases appeared one at a time. Now, with the Internet, they’re flooding us. Every week, it seems, we have new phraseology. We have no nouns left – every former noun is a verb. (The latest: effort. “Effort to finish that job.” Ugh.)
Aw, I guess that’s OK. They’re more to be pitied than censured. Let the techies live peacefully within their own exotic universe. It’s their way of getting us to hire them.
So terminology isn’t a big deal. We always can download one of those Web dictionaries online.
What is a growing circumstance – whether it’s a problem or an amusement is up to you – is the growing batch of impenetrable ads for online companies, placed in print and broadcast media. We’ll be riffling through The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times or U.S. News, or we’ll be watching a mindless sitcom, and here is advertising that defies interpretation.
Well, make that advertising that defies interpretation outside the enclave that createdit, which means its meaning eludes most people it’s supposed to influence.
Here is a huge ad in the main news section of a daily newspaper…which means it isn’t aimed at some arcane cabal. About 90% of the ad is one of those puzzles that have strings of alphabetical letters. We’re supposed to find phrases such as “Pitch a knuckleball” (I found that one), “Make hippie jeans” (I’d rather not) and “When should I retire” (I swear that one isn’t in there).
The entire text of the ad, in three lines below the puzzle:
Introducing How2HQ.com. It’s a headquarters, of sorts, for people looking for fresh ideas, fresh tutorials, even inspiration. You’ll learn to do things you never even knew you wanted to know how to do, along with several other great ideas that’ll make your life easier.
They’ve pitched a knuckleball. No, make that a spitball. When should the writer of that ad retire? How about right now? The main puzzle is: What is their call to action? Are we supposed to sign onto the Web site to learn how to make hippie jeans? Can’t you, within the next 30 seconds, think of a better way to motivate prospective site visitors, assuming that’s what they want?
A full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal is headed, “Last one in is a rotten CFO.” Provocative. Now let’s start reading the text:
First one to cut costs gets to jack up margins the most. Last one gets to come in last, period. So grab the lead now with new EALITYTM eXPressTM – the Web way to manage your business.TM
I quit reading right there. Three “TM” symbols in the same line, two of them after adjacent words – that’s dumb psychology, because it changes exhortation to the self-importance of trivia. Oh, “TM” icons do have a place, for legal purposes. This isn’t it.
Here’s a full-color bleed picture of a tough-looking baseball batter who has big, feminine breasts. The copy:
Less than .5% of performance-enhancing chemicals have any noticeable side effects.
Every percent counts.
bankrate.com
A line in 4-point type across the bottom offers a belated explanation. Well, make that a semi-explanation:
bankrate.com has the straight dope on mortgage rates, car loans, credit cards, CDs and more. Totally objective information. No artificial ingredients.
On we go, into the primitive dot-com rhetorical jungle. Here’s every word of copy in another full-page ad – color and bleed, of course:
Revolutionizing the Internet.
Blue Sky Ahead.
elianceTM
reliable e-commerce solutions.
1-877-4eliance – email: [email protected], www.eliancecorp.com
OK, tell us why we should contact this company. No fair cheating by making a blind trip to the Web site…because in this second generation of Web surfing we don’t do that any more.
Yet another strange candidate, on a field of solid green: Inside what appears to be a drawing of a bean, we see “beenz”; then, below it, “meenz”; and below that, a slice of bread. At the bottom is this conclusion to classic hucksterism:
Want your business to earn more bread? Serve beenz to your customers and make your competitors toast. Because beenz meenz business.
Sign up now and we’ll start you off with a free hill of beenz.
www.beenz.com/1
I recall staying at a resort in Jamaica where the cashier sold tiny plastic bananas we were supposed to use as money. (Everybody hated them and lost them, which may be what the resort intended.) Is that what this is? But how about those who haven’t had that background? And aside from collecting my 247th example of ads that say “means business,” what if I’m wrong in assuming bananas and beenz are parallel?
Ahh, I’m out of both time and patience, with a batch of similar ads still sitting here. Let’s cut to the chase. Two questions each of these messages raises, along with our hackles:
1. What, exactly, are we supposed to do as the result of exposure to them?
2. Is there a clearer, more motivational way of telling us what they think they’re telling us?
The prosecution summarizes with a definition that has so well served us in the world of direct…and, apparently, has so often eluded our counterparts in the glitzier but certainly no more effective world of conventional advertising:
The purpose of a direct response message is to cause the reader, viewer or listener to perform a positive act as the direct result of exposure to that message.
We’re claiming the Internet as an adopted member of our world. How many citizens of that segment are traveling through media without proper qualifying passports?
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