Marketing

Look out – here comes Captain Obvious. Thank you, Coors, for coming up with a beer bottle with a label that turns blue when it’s cold. I’ve always had trouble knowing when my beer was cold, and you’ve relieved me of that worry forever. It feels as though a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Who says progress is not always in the direction commonly referred to as “forward”?

Marketing is a funny business. Leaving aside the fact that it is beyond me how we ever got to the point of paying for clothes that are a blatant advertisement for the manufacturer, no matter how fancy their logo, some of the slogans make we wonder whoever dreamt them up, let alone whoever paid for someone to dream them up. (“We know why you fly” – American Airlines. Oh, really?)

Stella Artois is “Served reassuringly chilled”. Refreshingly, maybe, but reassuringly? I don’t find it reassuring at all, depending, I suppose, on exactly what they’re trying to reassure me about.

Lavazza is “Italy’s favourite coffee”, which is interesting, because countries don’t typically drink coffee – their inhabitants do. Even if this was grammatically correct, I doubt it’s true, but nobody is interested in bringing this minor porkie to their attention.

“A well rounded Portuguese red wine with a blend of grapes resulting is a smooth complex taste.” As Humpty Dumpty said in Alice in Wonderland: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Complex is something I leave behind at work – I don’t want to know about it when I’m eating dinner.

“Premium Bitter”. “Exceptional Ale”. “Triple Distilled”. When I was younger, I had a friend who worked in a petrol station. This was in the days of “mods and rockers”, and he told me of the time when a young mod pulled up on the forecourt in his Ford Anglia, jumped out (dressed in the requisite braces, boots and too-short trousers) and asked for “One of the rubbish, cousin”. At least he was honest. I don’t know what premium and exceptional mean any more, because the adjectival currency has been devalued to the extent that I have no frame of reference. If only someone would come up with “Crap Beer” or “Cheap Wine”, so that I had something to compare their exceptional equivalents to.

And don’t even get me started on “Fruit-on-the-Bottom Yoghourt”. How did they ever sell us that one? We never saw it coming, and didn’t get it when it arrived. It means we’ve got to stir it instead of them, thereby saving them money. And this would be better for us how?

They must think we’re complete morons. And they’re probably right.