Quest for bad slogans make me think the best one I've heard lately
I've long enjoyed Doug Lansky's irreverent views of travel, but until my colleague Christopher Elliott alerted me (and other readers) to it, I didn't realize that Lansky has a great, also-irreverent blog called The Titanic Awards, subtitled "Celebrating the Dubious Achievements of Travel." Today he posted "a few contenders" for the dubious honor of the worst slogans to promote tourism to countries, states, provinces, cities, travel companies and so on.
My favorite of his nominees is Wales. Lansky spotlighted the slogan, “Wales. The Big Country,” and commented, "No, Canada is a big country. So is China. And India, Brazil, Australia. If you’re going to start making shit up, why not say Wales is a tropical island with white sandy beaches and attractive, well-tanned natives who serve free beer around the clock."
Lansky is inviting readers to nominate other slogans that are lousy, misleading or both. I'm going to try to come up with something, but meanwhile, the first thing that popped into my mind was a long-ago, hopefully tongue-in-cheek proposal for this advertising slogan for Panasonic: "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor." It famously became the title of a book by Jerry Della Femina about the ad business in the days now dramatized on the TV series, "Mad Men."
Reading bad slogans brought to mind a clever, simple one that I recently encountered. The small city of Manhattan, Kansas, with a population of 51,000 +/- adopted the nickname, "The Little Apple."
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While people may have different views still good things should always be appreciated. Yours is a nice blog. Liked it!!!
ReplyDeleteI got a chuckled out of Wales - A Big Country too. I'm trying to get a job in advertising, which is not easy these days. I think I have to read the Della Femina book in case I get land a slot. - Jerry (not Della Femina)
ReplyDeleteUtah's "Life Elevated" is pretty.. uninspiring, I think.. from someone who LIVES there!
ReplyDeleteAustralia's slogan's must be misleading, as I did not expect when I got htere that it had the fattest people in the world!
ReplyDelete