I was cleaning my kitchen the other night when a slogan from the bottle of dishwashing liquid caught my eye. ‘Trusted for over 100 years’, it stated. I stood looking at that for a long time. Do you trust the soap you wash dishes with? Do you have to? Like, have you ever been disdainfully untrusting of any dish soap? It’s not like bottles of dish soap are plotting to steal your money or be unfaithful with your best friend or criticize you behind your back.
Marketing is such a fine balance. You can either capture a provocative phrase that will entice purchasers to flock to your product, or you can appear simply ridiculous. Funny, though, that even a ridiculous message can be impactful if repeated over and over, or if declared with a significant amount of vigour.
Like my friend’s preschooler who ran into the kitchen one morning with his emphatic message: “Mom! You can change your life in less than 10 minutes a day!”
It was a commercial for some sort of home exercise equipment which, undoubtedly, had the potential of making the purchaser feel better and build toward better health. But change your life? That’s a lot of expectation to put into the hands of a couple of dumbbells.
Admittedly, I did ‘thank heaven for 7-11’ many times while growing up, and ‘a little dab’ll do ya’ are certainly words to live by when applying any type of fragrance.
The problem with working in marketing and communications is that the persuasive intent in any and all advertising stands out beyond any other message. You can’t flip through a magazine without dissing half of the ads.
You can’t enjoy a book without casting your editing eye on the choice of words, the sentence structure, the continuity of the whole story. On the flip side, there’s no greater appreciation for a perfectly structured sentence than that felt by a writer and there are many phrases copied into journalist’s notebooks when they come across a perfectly constructed piece of copy that packs a punch.
Great things can happen when messaging is on point. The television station that carried wholesome children’s programming when my daughter was little was so compelling in its promotion that she named one of her toy dogs ‘Annual Support’. Imagine if we surrounded children – and people of all ages – with messaging of kindness, respect and tolerance.
There is a campaign for my favourite jeans that shows a person leaving the store with their new purchase, while words of affirmation are shared in the narrative: ‘This time around… I’m going to move more slowly, I’m going to love more, I’m going to share when I can and only take what I need…’ Now if a new pair of jeans can remind us of our own values each time we put them on, I say ‘Charge it!’
Sandy Bexon is stepping into retirement after over 35 years as a communications professional, reporter and writer. She lives in Red Deer.
