Tim Hortons Gets Brownie Points for Word Play

Tim Hortons is advertising a limited-time Caramel Chocolate Brownie Iced Capp Supreme. The tagline for the campaign is "Brownie Points for Caramel".

The above image is from the Tim Hortons website which includes this description of the beverage: "It's our famous Iced Capp made with creamy caramel flavor, rich chocolate whipped topping and a decadent brownie crumble."

I noticed one of the campaign billboards a week or so ago and, I must say, the tagline is one of the best I have seen in quite a while.  I absolutely love the fact that Brownie points is open to both the figurative and literal interpretation.

Brownie points: a notional mark of achievement, or kudos for performing some creditable act.

toast points: triangular pieces of toast, often without the crust, used as the base of hors d'oeuvres and canapés.

Okay, so the brownies may not actually be points, but I can certainly imagine that some of the crumbles are in the shape of triangles.

Always Your Flavorite

Burnett's Flavored Vodkas may have launched the "Always Your Flavorite" advertising campaign over a year ago, but I just saw one of the billboards for the first time last week. Perhaps the campaign is new to Michigan.

The company's press release stated that "the campaign includes a large scale consumer and trade advertising and outdoor campaign." This makes me wonder why, even if the campaign is new to Michigan, I couldn't find one image from the campaign on the internet.

Either way, something about the slogan didn't sit right with me.

I get the portmanteau of  flavor + favorite; that doesn't bother me, though it is nothing spectacular. So, it must be something to do with the adverb always or the possessive determiner your.

I will start with the possessive determiner your. Flavored or not, I have never had Burnett's vodka so nothing about it has to do with me. The same idea applies to the adverb always. Having never had Burnett's, it could not always be anything to me. Even if I had had the vodka, the history on Heaven Hill's website indicates that they did not launch Burnett's Vodka until 1991. I was of the legal drinking age before then and I have always preferred Absolut or Stoli (both of which have long made flavored vodkas).

Off the top of my head, I came up with a couple of alternatives (mind you, I have not done any trademark research).

Retaining the deictic nature of the message but adding an appropriately suggestive spin  -

Your New Flavorite 

And another playful, idiom-based suggestion -

Play Flavorites

Which can easily incorporate a positive reminder -

And Play Safe; Don't Drink and Drive.

F*ckin' Word Play Update

Just about a month ago, I posted F*ckin' Word Play which included an image from the advertising campaign of the United Kingdom furniture company Sofa King.

Today, Language Log brought to my attention (in a delightfully humorous post) the fact that Sofa King's slogan was recently "branded offensive by the Advertising Standards Authority".

Ay-Yay-Yay, that is Sofa King lame - Sofa King lighten up.

Language Log also brought to my attention this 2007 Saturday Night Live sketch about Sofa King.

Sofa King funny.

Suffix-Based Advertising Campaign is an Exercise in Futility

I think I see what the advertising agency was aiming for by centering this advertising campaign around the "-ility" suffix, based on the positive aspects of the definitions for the suffix listed below.

-ility
(Latin: a suffix; meaning, ability, ability to) wordinfo.info

-ility 
a combination of -ile and -ity, used to form abstract nouns from adjectives with stems in -ile: agility; civility; ability. dictionary.com

However, what immediately popped into my mind were the following words:

debility

fragility

futility

hostility

senility

volatility

invisibility

irritability

inaccessibility

irresponsibility

susceptibility

Don't Be An Asterisk - A Linguistic Analysis

The following magazine ad is one of 27 that have been nominated for an MPA Kelly Award for outstanding magazine advertising.


The ad copy reads as follows:

When you take steroids, there's no hiding it. Eventually everyone will see you for what you really are. A fake. A fraud. An asterisk.

Don'tBeAnAsterisk.com

Linguistically, this advertising campaign is one of the best I have seen of late. The tagline for the campaign (which doubles as the web address) makes outstanding use of syllabification, phonetics, and semantics to deliver a double message that really reinforces the negatives of using steroids.

Semantically, when it comes to sports, an asterisk is associated with a footnote to an athlete's record. In other words, if an athlete sets a record but is found to have been using steroids during the time the record was set, the athlete will be thought of as a fake and a fraud and the record will not be respected.

Phonetically, when reading the tagline and breaking it up into syllables, the word asterisk lends part of itself to another well known phrase, "don't be an ass," which provides for a second semantic interpretation of the tagline.

In sum, the syllabification, phonetics and semantics involved in the tagline of this ad campaign send two messages to athletes who uses steroids: (1) they are at risk of having an asterisk attached to any records they set, and (2) they are asses.

Ribbit. Chirp. Ka-Ching! - Onomatopoeiac Casino Advertising and Billboards

This is a screen shot of a print ad from an advertising campaign for the Saganing Eagles Landing Casino in Standish Michigan. The campaign also includes numerous billboards on I-75. I get a kick out of the effect the onomatopoeias have on the semantics of the advertising message.

Slot machines really can be animals.

Clear Blue Easy Advertising - Poor Word Choice

This is from a current print ad campaign for Clear Blue Easy Pregnancy Tests:

1 in 4 women can misread

a traditional pregnancy test.

Read this one.

Oh semantics...semantics, semantics, semantics.

Sure 1 in 4 women can misread a traditional pregnancy test but will 1 in 4 women misread a traditional pregnancy ? Give us women a little more credit.

The word can semantically implies that it is possible but not necessarily so.

A better word choice would have been:

1 in 4 women will misread
a traditional pregnancy test.

or, more simply put:

1 in 4 women misreads
a traditional pregnancy test.

By the way, if Clear Blue Easy's research does not support phrasing the statement in a more definitive way, perhaps they should consider a different approach entirely.

Phonetic Similarities in Advertising Campaigns - Band of Brothers/Baserunners

The similarities between this new Dick's Sporting Goods print ad for Nike baseball shoes and the print ad for the television miniseries Band of Brothers are striking (pun intended).

The first thing I noticed was the phonetic similarity between the title of the ad and the title of the show. I almost read "Band of Brothers" in my head as I was looking at the Dick's/Nike ad.



The design elements in the ads are similar as well. The text runs right to the edge of the page in both ads and both ads feature a lineup (pun intended again) of something. The Dick's ad has a lineup of Nike shoes and the miniseries ad has a lineup of soldiers.

Trying to sell an unrelated product based on the popularity of a miniseries is a new one on me.

The Semiotics of Logos - Obama and Pepsi are Lookalikes

As mentioned in a previous post, semiotics is the branch of linguistics that is concerned with the relationship between a sign and what the sign represents. Semiotics also looks at how people interpret the meaning of signs. In semiotics a sign is considered any type of symbol that stands for another thing. By this definition, a product logo would be considered a sign because the logo stands for the product. People are able to interpret this meaning of the sign because they are conditioned to by advertising.

The above three logos have many similarities (color, shape, wavey lines). The logo at the left is the new Pepsi logo, the logo at the right is the old Pepsi logo, and the logo in the middle is a logo from President Obama's campaign.

I wonder if the creator of this Obama logo intentionally imitated the Pepsi logo so people would associate Obama with Pepsi?

The Pepsi brand was trademarked in 1903 and many people think of Pepsi as an American tradition. Obama certainly does not fit the traditional description of an American president...but maybe with a little help from logos and semiotics.

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.

McDonald's Coffee Billboard - Pragmatics Fail

This is a billboard located on I-75 in Flint, Michigan.

If you ask me this billboard and another recent billboard for McDonald's coffee place too much value on a customer’s income. This billboard is not only a put down to people in the city of Flint, it also implies that a person must have monetary wealth in order to have good taste.

At any rate, the pragmatic aspect of this billboard is what first jumped out at me. It is well known in the study of pragmatics that the context in which communication occurs plays an important role in the listener's ability to interpret the speaker's intended meaning. In this case the communication is between writer and reader. The reason I see this as a pragmatics fail is because the context of this communication is its location and I don't believe that the writer took the context into consideration. What I am referring to is the fact that this billboard is on an interstate highway that is travelled by people from many different cities and states. Unless the reader of the billboard is very familiar with the zones that zip codes cover and the income level of the people in those zones, the billboard doesn't really communicate to the reader the writer's intended semantic implication.

Budweiser - An Inaugural Attempt at Wordplay?

Spotted this Budweiser ad on the back cover of this week's Newsweek magazine.

I really got a kick out of the wordplay. I was impressed with the creativity and simplicity of adding the letter "E" to inaugural to change the word both phonetically and semantically. Actually, inaugurale could also be thought of as a portmanteau word (a blend of inaugural and ale), and this is likely one of the messages Budweiser's ad agency was hoping to promote...new president, new beginning, try a new beer. But, was this new word really coined by Budweiser's ad agency's or did someone else come up with the idea first?

Upon doing a bit of research I came across the above beer bottled by Schlafly Beer of the Saint Lewis Brewery. Additionally, according to washingtonpost.com, Capitol City Brewing has been offering InaugurAle since shortly after the Nov. 4 election. And, last but not least, washingtonian.com ran an article on January 13 about a Mount Pleasant, Michigan homebrewer, Sam Chapple-Sokol, who had a friend print labels with an “InaugurAle Edition” emblem modeled after Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Regardless of who first came up with the idea, I still enjoy the wordplay.

Crystal Light's Advertising Word Choice

The wording in this ad for Crystal Light Lemonade gave me pause.

Do I have to mix Crystal Light Lemonade AND the sweet tang from a natural lemon to attain a pitcher of magical sunshine?

Here is an idea for a better choice of wording -

Stir up a pitcher of sunshine WITH the sweet tang of natural lemon in Crystal Light Lemonade.

Reader's Favorites - Iced to Meet You - McDonald's Phonology

McDonald's now sells iced coffee and the advertising campaign to promote it includes a billboard with a photo of the iced coffee and the text "ICED TO MEET YOU." Thank you McDonald's, this billboard is a great exhibit of the fun that can be had with phonology.
The phonemes /d/ and /t/ are both alveolar stops that are only differentiated in their voicing. Because of the close relationship between the /d/ and /t/ phonemes, when they are adjacent to each other they blend and become one sound. The result of this is that when read aloud "iced to meet you" sounds an awful lot like "nice to meet you." This coincidence was clearly a large part of McDonald's intended, though somewhat covert, message on the billboard - McDonald's iced coffee is so good the consumer will think it nice to have met.
Because the /d/ and /t/ phonemes can not be distinguished verbally, this campaign only works in print as it is the act of reading the billboard and reciting it aloud to yourself that makes it fun and gets the intended message across.

Iced to Meet You - McDonald's Phonology

McDonald's now sells iced coffee and the advertising campaign to promote it includes a billboard with a photo of the iced coffee and the text "ICED TO MEET YOU." Thank you McDonald's, this billboard is a great exhibit of the fun that can be had with phonology.

The phonemes /d/ and /t/ are both alveolar stops that are only differentiated in their voicing. Because of the close relationship between the /d/ and /t/ phonemes, when they are adjacent to each other they blend and become one sound. The result of this is that when read aloud "iced to meet you" sounds an awful lot like "nice to meet you." This coincidence was clearly a large part of McDonald's intended, though somewhat covert, message on the billboard - McDonald's iced coffee is so good the consumer will think it nice to have met.

Because the /d/ and /t/ phonemes can not be distinguished verbally, this campaign only works in print as it is the act of reading the billboard and reciting it aloud to yourself that makes it fun and gets the intended message across.