04 March 2009

Corporate intelligence, Vol. 7

You know, a lot of ill-informed people claim that word choice doesn't really matter in most everyday areas of life, but I'm here to offer just one random example of an instance that proves these people to be morons.

Recently, I couldn't help but notice the friendly banner on my wife's new package of Aquaphor cream, offering what was surely intended to be an innocuous description of the product:

Aquaphor - One solution for your many skin care problemsWhat that little extra word ("your") did there was turn a sentiment of unity ("All of you people with your varying skin problems can use this one product to solve them!") into a back-handed, bitchy message worthy of a junior high cheerleading squad ("You are so lucky I'm here to help you! ...Because you are way more f***ed up than you ignorantly thought before picking up this package.").

Torpedoing the self-esteem of one's customer base is not generally thought to be a good business decision.*

There is a potential upside for the manufacturers, though, if this tack opens up potential new sales across the Eucerin family of products through the well-established phenomenon of victims latching on to their abusers against their better judgment or interests. Just look at how well this has worked for our** lovable scamps down at AIG!

In fact, scratch this whole post, and give me 2,000 shares of whatever disgustingly enormous mega-conglomerate bottles this goo!

Here's to you and your horrible excuse for human skin!



* Unless of course you're in women's fashion.

** I say "our" because we, the American people, now own them almost in their entirety, at least until just
before the stock sale by the U.S. government might bring in enough profit to cover the entire stimulus package.

17 comments:

Bookworm said...

Hey thanks for stopping by and commenting on my blog! As an also aspiring writer, I can feel your pain, especially about wording choices. And don't even get me started on the "your" vs. "you're" issue, or the poor placement of apostraphes for plural vs posessive. It's "Eat and Joe's" because the diner belongs to Joe. But "That store has a lot of hats" not "That store has a lot of hat's" because the hats is plural not possessive. *sigh.* Okay, I'm backing away from the soapbox now. LOL

Jenny Grace said...

...Should it have said y'all's? I mean, I've got Southern roots, but English doesn't really have a good "plural you" system going.

Halftime Lessons said...

Hard for me to get mad at Aquaphor these days...that stuff has saved us more times than I can count. We keep a shrine to it in our home.

Rikki said...

Dan do you have rage? ;)

beth said...

Soon AIG and every other US company will really be a proud Chinese company. Ugh!

LiteralDan said...

Midlife Mama: You, my friend, are preaching to the choir. You might enjoy The "Blog" of Unnecessary Quotation Marks (assuming you haven't already seen it).

Miss Grace: I would love to see the nationally-distributed package that says "Y'alls" anything. And you are correct, we need to all get together and fix that lack, along with the lack of a gender-neutral singular pronoun besides "it". People seem to hate being called that.

Halftime Lessons: Yeah, it's good stuff. Ever since a bad bout of wind-chapped lips, both kids now demand "wip stuff" most nights whether they really need it or not.

Rikki: Rage? Moi? Never!

beth: I fear that process may already be half finished... but I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords!

Mrs. B. Roth said...

Hey, look, a post with not too many comments.

Mrs. B. Roth said...

Perhaps I can Get on the top 10 list.

Mrs. B. Roth said...

If I just take a little time here, as I feed baby girl blueberry applesauce.

Mrs. B. Roth said...

Sorry, Dan. But I'm feeling competitive lately.

Mrs. B. Roth said...

And then you go and put that freaking counter thing up to mock me.

Mrs. B. Roth said...

I've tried for so very long to only comment when I have something unique or witty to add.

Mrs. B. Roth said...

Sorry, again, but today ... maybe there's an abundance of testosterone flowing through my veins.

Mrs. B. Roth said...

But dang it, I want to see my name on that list...

Mrs. B. Roth said...

Hmmm... this is proving harder than I had imagined.

Mrs. B. Roth said...

And I'm starting to feel ... a little ... well, maybe I should look in the archives for another post to hijack.

Mrs. B. Roth said...

husband just got home and revoked my computer privileges ... but I'll be back .. somedau my name will be over then for most comments .. someday ....