Commercially Viable

I saw an ad today while walking home from work, and it was quite effective. Not that it made me want to buy their product/service, but rather that it has preoccupied my attention since.

The ad was for Weight Watchers, and it is simply a quick block of text: "Go on a diet diet."

That makes no sense.

Let me repeat the line: "Go on a diet diet."

Now, the sentiment comes across clear enough. Partially the context helps: having seen other ads by this company that in the same campaign, I know the concept is to get people to realize that "diets" are really unhealthy, because they are essentially fads and not lifestyle changes (and, generally, not natural). Low-carb diets. Soup diets. Shake diets. This is what they are trying to get you to avoid and, in turn, choose their product, which I'm guessing offers healthy, balanced meals (at a "reasonable" price). Hence, go on a diet from diets.

But that's not what their ad actually says.

It says go on a diet diet. As in, a diet consisting of diets. Don't believe me? Look at the examples I used above: low-carb diet; soup diet; shake diet. Why did I italicize the first words? Because that's what the diet is based on. A low-carb diet isn't a diet that tells you to stay away from low-carbs, it's a diet that insists you eat food that are low in carbohydrates. I can't think of a possible example where their ad would be justified. Even named diets, like Atkins or South Beach are not saying "avoid what these diets tell you."

What bothers me about this is not so much that the grammar is wrong -- hell, I've probably have numerous grammatical errors in this post alone -- but that the company paid someone (or another company) a good deal of money to design an effective ad campaign, and this was one of the "winning" ideas. That means that not only did it make sense to the people who thought of it, but the people who eventually approved it also thought it made sense.

Which makes you wonder if you should really trust a company like Weight Watchers.

Still, this wouldn't bother me enough to write about if it wasn't for another recent ad campaign, this one by Take 5, one of the New York Lotto games. Their current gimmick is that, since the odds of winning are apparently really good, all you need is a "little luck." They convey this by having a man in a suit tell people this, and here's the kicker: he's little. I know, it's clever, isn't it? Instead of being "a lot" of luck (which one of the ads shows as being the same guy, only really tall and fat), you just need a "little" bit.

Now, I love puns. I love bad puns. But I also wouldn't try to make money off a bad pun. I acknowledge that a pun is bad, and don't hinge any hopes on the pun being received as anything but something to groan at. That said, bad puns (yes, I'm aware that many people believe that all puns are bad; these people are soulless ghouls) still require a connection to a plausible misinterpretation. In other words, you can't just emphasize a word and expect people to groan -- there needs to be a context for that word to have a second meaning (for example, if a group of friends were discussing cars, and you were getting bored, you might say "This conversation is really tired." If you don't mind getting punched about the chest and skull, you could even go as far as saying "This conversation is wheely tired.").

These Take 5 commercials lack such a context. Yes, luck is necessary, and the visual pun of him being little could make sense, except for one small (oooh, pun!) problem: how is this bald man with glasses, a ginourmous head, a blue blazer, and khaki pants, in any way, shape, or form, to be identified as "luck?"

Think about it for a second.

Because that's the only way the joke works. It doesn't matter if he's little, because he's not "luck." Consider it this way: if they had a cartoon bear instead of the man, and this tiny cartoon bear said he was a "little luck," wouldn't you be confused? Wouldn't you ask: why a bear? Well, it's the same thing here: why an annoying man in a sports coat?

So now, not only are the commercials and ads disturbing (the guy looks really weird, and a little frightening -- man, there's another one), but they are stupid and without sense.

What's worse is that our tax money at work -- we paid for a moron to come up with these ads (never mind that we are advertising gambling, a very small portion of which actually goes to the schools).

No, what's worse is that, aside from me, no one really cares. And I don't even care that much.