Mass and Count Nouns - brought to you by Meijer

This is one of two themed billboards that has been peppering Michigan expressways this spring.

The other looks almost identical, save for the final noun phrase which replaces fewer stops with less run-around.

I don't think it is any coincidence that the two separate billboards always seem to appear within a few miles of each other. Meijer's advertising agency copywriters certainly know the difference between mass and count nouns. Funny thing is, I am not a frequent Meijer shopper, so I can't recall whether their check-out lanes are labeled X number items or less, or X number items or fewer.

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.

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.

Bad Advertising - Billboard Semiotics and Pragmatics Fail

Take a close look at the bottom billboard and think about what each symbol might represent and what the sum of these symbols is intended to communicate.

Now, picture driving at 80 miles an hour and trying to figure out not only what each symbol might represent but also what the sum of these symbols is meant to communicate.

As mentioned in a previous post about a billboard pragmatics fail, the context in which a communication occurs plays an important role in a reader's ability to interpret a writer's intended meaning. The context here is the side of an expressway. Any reader in a car going 80 miles an hour or more is going to have an awfully hard time interpreting the writer's intended meaning because at that speed the reader will have a very short time to view the symbols. Not to mention that this doesn't even take into account the possibility of a semi truck obstructing a reader's view.

As for the semiotics fail, the symbols were so poorly executed that my first guess was:

beak + carrot ('s) + rake + "in" + rolling pin

Oh...how wrong I was and and oh...what bad advertising.

Upon seeing the billboard a third time I realized - the bird is a duck and the arrow is pointing to its bill, the carrot is supposed to be a surfboard and the last arrow is pointing to a blob of dough, not the rolling pin.

bill + board ('s) + rake + "in" + dough

So the writer's intended meaning was, "billboards rake in dough."

Okay, maybe I should have realized that was a duck the first time but I was driving and reprimanding kids at the same time. Plus I still think the second symbol looks like a carrot everytime I pass it.

Did I mention the apostrophe error? Does the billboard own the rake? The writer should have used a "+ s" not a "'s"

Related posts:

semiotics definition

additional semiotics posts

additional billboard posts

billboards advertising billboard advertising

Semiotic Billboard Advertising is Eye Catching

There is a billboard on southbound I-75 near Saginaw that advertises advertising on billboards (A fun topic about which I have previously posted). This particular billboard relies upon semiotics to succinctly deliver its message. The billboard is simply an image of numerous eyeballs being scooped into a net. I was unable to snap a picture of the actual billboard so this is my, admittedly, lame attempt at reproducing it.

The symbolism of the eyeball/net combination can be interpreted as either "catching eyes" or "eye-catching." I believe that either interpretation successfully delivers the message that advertising on billboards works.

McDonald's Coffee Billboard - A Semantic Analysis

McDonald's billboards continue to provide data for linguistic analysis. A previous post covered the creative use of phonology on a billboard and now there is a billboard that begs for a semantic analysis. The billboard has a picture of a cup of coffee with the following text:

Rich...
so you don't have to be.

Just like yesterday, I am going to get into word choice. When I read this billboard it semantically implies to me that only the people who cannot afford expensive coffee chains should try McDonald's coffee. I think a far better choice of conjunction would have been: Rich...and you don't have to be. This choice of wording semantically implies that you could be wealthy, middle-class or poor (basically, your income has nothing to do with the supposed richness of the coffee) because everyone will like and be able to afford the coffee.

Billboard Plays with Morphology, Syllabification and Semantics - Ad Here

As long as we are on the topic of billboards this week, another great one I spotted recently is a billboard that advertises advertising on billboards. This is a notable billboard because it relies on morphology, syllabification, and semantics to make its point. Unfortunately, there is not an available image of this billboard and I was driving too quickly to take a picture. At any rate, I will do my best to describe it.

There is a bottle of glue in the lower left corner and there are letters that give the illusion of being cut from magazine text and glued to the billboard. The letters appear to form one word adhere; however, the letters a and d are in the same font which is a different font from the letters h, e, r, and e that are also in the same font. Does that make sense? Like this: adhere.

So you have the word adhere with the syllables ad and here, which are also the free morphemes (or words) ad and here. Semantically this delivers two messages:

1. The viewer of the billboard, as a potential advertiser, could put their ad on that billboard
and
2. If the viewer of the billboard puts their ad on that billboard, their message will adhere with future billboard viewers, in other words, the message will stick to the future billboard viewers memory (which is key in advertising).

Semantics Humor - Fake Billboards