Those awful advertising slogans - no. 12 - Let's play buzzword bingo

Rather than pick up on any one nauseous ad, I thought this festive offering could be a bit different. We'll be exploring some of the words used by admen to describe products and, perhaps more crucially, the progenitors of the products. And then we can play an exciting game for all the family as we rack up points by seeing how many words we can find in the ads of our choice. Yes, it's time for Buzzword Bingo! [Er. I know you asked me to look into copyrighting this phrase but what with the budgie's cold and waiting in for the gas man* and trying to work out who sent us a rather odd Xmas card, I haven't actually got round to it yet but I'm sure it will be OK: Ed]

• Passion - you cannot simply want to make something in order to earn a living and pay off the mortgage. You must do it with passion. Apparently people who farm tomatoes or make olive oil have this passion. Or so the ads tell me. I don't believe it.
• Craft and/or Crafting - nobody in ads ever makes anything. They craft them. The idea is to divorce the process of design and construction by hand (good) from mass-production manufacturing by low-paid (probably Chinese) workers in huge soulless factories (bad). Beer made in small breweries is now routinely described as craft beer. Even though it is brewed in exactly the same way as in large breweries, just in smaller vats.
• Excellence - Many years ago an influential  business book called In Search of Excellence helped propel this word into the limelight. The company I happened to work for at the time was one of those cited. Whatever it meant then, it is now routinely applied to everything and the the word has been devalued into meaning nothing other than a vague desire to be about as good as most of the rest.
• Vision - All founders of any business are attributed with vision. The fact that most new businesses tend to fail, even though their owners had as much vision as those that succeeded, and therefore that luck is a key factor, is conveniently ignored. 
• Natural - ah yes, the wonders of the natural world. Often found linked with Pure. Some natural things are good. Others are deadly. Who remembers when Perrier from a "natural" source was found to be contaminated with pure, natural Benzene? There is no virtue in being natural per se.
• Pure - The purest product of all is distilled water. Since it tastes of nothing, you don't find it on the shelves (other than for topping up car batteries). Instead you find "mineral water" which contains all sorts of additives but it's all right because they are Natural (see above).
• Perfection - How many times has something been described as perfect and then been Improved?
• New / Improved / Just got better - Ad speak for something that is smaller than it used to be but costs more, or where the name has been pointlessly changed (big fee for the ad agency) and longtime customers are irritated (but ignored), or where nothing at all of any importance has happened but the Marketing Director is desperate to show her sceptical colleagues that she is doing something. Important - where something is said to be improved, on no account explain why it wasn't better in the first place. At this time it is fashionable for many perfume ads to appear - look for the strapline "the new perfume from ..." and ask yourself what was wrong with the old ones, because there must have been or why launch yet another into a very crowded marketplace?
• Premium - adspeak for more expensive than something similar which is sold in less costly packaging.
• Luxury - see Premium
• Exclusive - adspeak for expensive. Always misused. Nothing described as exclusive actually is based on exclusion, other than ability to pay, because if it was then all sorts of laws against discrimination would be broken. Genuinely exclusive entities (such as golf clubs) don't advertise. Frequently applied to housing as in "Exclusive Development" when what they really mean is "Development".
• Executive - The Civil Service used to be divided into three grades - Clerical, Executive and Administrative. In those days executive meant people who carry out the instructions of those making policy (and it was the Administrators who had the highest status not the Executives). It has changed meaning to something that becomes more vague and useless the more one thinks about it. We have imported the phrase CEO (Chief Executive Officer) from the US where previously Managing Director or General Manager were used to denote the bloke at the top but the word Executive is otiose - Chief Officer conveys exactly the same meaning and takes less time to say. You will often find ordinary detached houses for sale described as Executive and you will be none the wiser as to what distinguishes them from other ordinary detached houses.

I think that's enough to be going on with.

HOW TO PLAY BUZZWORD BINGO© [I did tell you it isn't actually copyright yet, didn't I? Ed]

The players flip through a magazine and select an advert each using some suitable method that will cause the minimum of argument.

Score: 1 point for each buzzword.
Score: An additional point if 2 buzzwords are used in the same sentence
Score: An additional 5 points if 4 or more buzzwords are used in the same paragraph.

The winner is the person who first wades through the advertising copy, announces his score and manages not to vomit.

* [I'm the one waiting in, not the budgie. Just thought I'd make that clear. The budgie tends to wait in anyway on account of how we've put him in a cage. Ed]

Seasonal musings

I was strolling from the local park toward Eastcote the other day, as part of what passes for vigorous exercise these days in the Commuter household, when a lady of advanced years walking the other way (whom I did not know) said brightly "Isn't it strange how sunny and warm it is, with Christmas only two weeks away?". I made some commonplace remark and moved on. It's nice that total strangers have the confidence to make comments, (or perhaps I looked so downcast she thought I needed cheering up) but she was wrong. I posted on this very blog more than ten years ago to point out that we no longer suffer cold weather at this time of the year. Indeed, should the forecasters suggest that the temperature may drop towards 1⁰ or 2⁰ above zero just for a couple of days, you can be sure that the Daily Mail headline will read "Arctic Blast To Batter Britain" with a follow-up on "Celebrity top tips for avoiding a cold nose" or somesuch. It is not strange to have mild weather at this time of year, it would be snow and freezing temperatures that would be out of place.

But in our memories November was always chilly, brightened up by Bonfire Night and the smell of backyard fires as our fathers removed the leaves the non-ecological way; December was cold, wet and increasingly icy with sparkling clear nights that promised frost and left strange patterns on our (un-centrally heated) bedroom windows. You could seriously speculate about a white Christmas. We no longer do so. When I started commuting for the first time, going to school by train, in 1962 the winter was seriously cold, so cold that one day our train was held at North Harrow with a frozen track ahead. I cannot recall this happening since.

All of which makes the sort of stuff supermarkets insist on playing over their PA systems as you ponder between the Luxury, Premium and Special Gold nut selections all the more bizarre. Has anyone ever seen a one-horse open sleigh, let alone dashed through the snow in one? Does anyone round these parts go into "the meadow" to build a snowman? Is anyone really "dreaming" of a white Christmas or simply the dreading the horror of filthy slush and frozen snow heaped up at the side of roads, masking black ice for us to break our ankles over (assuming we have not been run over by a skidding car first)? And must they play "last Christmas you gave me your heart" as we walk past the meat counter? Or is Dr. Frankenstein the man putting on the CDs? I think we should be told.

Bad taste corner

The news story itself is grim and sad - victims of online crime, who foolishly allowed themselves to be videoed whilst doing things normally only done in private, blackmailed and some driven to suicide.

But surely the Guardian might have assigned the story to someone other than its reporter Alexandra Topping?

Cake today, Cake tomorrow

We may live in a digital age but the easiest way to quickly encapsulate a lot of information is still the good old-fashioned notebook. This morning, thanks to a quick-witted cameraman, we can all get a glimpse of how a government aide views the crucial negotiations for Britain's departure from the EU, as she helpfully brought her opened notebook into a Downing Street meeting. Like other commentators, I have fastened on to the most important point, which I show below helpfully highlit.

Courtesy Barcroft Images/ The Guardian

The key words read: What's the model? Have cake and eat it.

So it is written and thus it must surely be. Forget goverment by parliament (now that referenda rule). Forget the rule of law (enemies of the people, according to a well known daily paper I refuse to name). Cake is the name of the game and, once we've thrown off the shackles of EU faceless bureaucrat enslavement, we will not only have cake but can eat it as well and jolly well STILL HAVE IT. 

Cake is good. The Great British Bake-Off is the most popular show on telly for a reason. So I am enormously reassured that our leaders have latched on to this essential fact with what must be called the Marie Antoinette policy. Pound sinking? Finance sector upping sticks for Frankfurt and Dublin? Industrial investors all round the world thinking "Shall we bother to spend any more in the UK? Nah". None of this matters a jot. We are going to have cake. Victoria Sponges. Lemon Drizzle. Coffee and Walnut. Chocolate cake. I hesitate to mention fruit cakes for obvious reasons. Whether the nation will divide, bitterly, over the burning issue of whether Jaffa Cakes are indeed of the cake family or merely jumped-up biscuits is, I hope, to be left to another time.

I trust that Theresa May is writing her resignation speech and has primed the Queen for another change at the top of Government. When Mary Berry drives round to the Palace to kiss hands, we will surely be on the road to that shining city on a hill where the shops are open all day, there is plenty of room in the car parks, there is as much cake as anyone can want and you can eat all you like and still have it. You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. [Yes you are: Ed]

Three for the price of one

 My eye was caught by an ad for a theatrical presentation at the Donmar Warehouse in Kings Cross and I present it to you thus:

Now there are well known trilogies like the Lord of the Rings or The Godfather, and there are series like Star Wars, in which the sequence of pieces develops its themes, stories and characters in a harmonious and pleasing way. Shakespeare himself has his natural trilogies (Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V, and the Henry VI series). One does not really expect three utterly different plays to be lumped together as a trilogy unless they have something that links them (other than that they are being performed at the same place by the same company). And so, it being a Saturday and there are few minutes to spare before we join the shoppers down at our local Sainsbury's (and having missed, without regret, "Black Friday"), I give you some sense of what this trio of plays should be like.

Scene: A storm near the Forum, just outside a low tavern
Enter Brutus

Brutus: This unnatural storm has soaked my toga. Hello, is that a tavern? Two pints here, Sir John, and see what Caliban would like. Has the Earl of Worcester left any messages for me only we're supposed to be working over the king this afternoon and then I've got a date lined up with Miranda up on Gad's Hill on the Ides.

I think something like that might pack them in but perhaps it needs just a little more work.