Wednesday, February 4, 2009

McDonald's Advertising - Phonetics Fun

To make up for yesterday's somewhat negative post about one of McDonald's advertising campaigns, here is a picture from the newspaper of another campaign that I really enjoy (I have also seen it on a billboard). The phonetic word play is entertaining and the message is an upbeat one (unlike the campaign reviewed yesterday). This campaign makes me happy.

5 comments:

OHN said...

Hi...I just stumbled upon your blog and I had to tell you I LOVE IT!

My friends tease me about my cringing when I hear misplaced words and phrases.

I have you bookmarked and I will be back :) (I promise I am not a crazy stalker).

Laura Payne said...

Thank you for the compliment. I enjoyed your blog too and will continue to read it.

Anonymous said...

As a non-native speaker of English, I have to admit I couldn't read into the meaning and/or wordplay of 'You mocha me happy.' Would you elaborate a bit more, on this and on similar posts in the future, as it's likely there might be others like me regularly following your blog.

Laura Payne said...

Thank you for your suggestion Medio. You are right, I should elaborate more for non-native speakers and I will keep that in mind in the future.

In this case "you make me happy" is a phrase that is used in many songs, poems and greeting cards in the US. Some speakers have started to say "you make-a-me happy" in an effort to sound cute, I guess.

At any rate, the phonetic fun in this ad involves changing the /e/ phoneme from "make" to the /o/ phoneme resulting in the association of the "happy" phrase with McDonald's mocha.

Anonymous said...

"McDonald's Advertising - Phonetics Fun" is an interesting case, in which "You mocha me happy" wouldn't be comprehensible even to a native speaker in an imaginative case in which the native speaker is cast away on an Island for example, and is not familiar with the history of 'You make me happy.' later turned 'You make-a-me happy.'

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