Michael Eriksson
A Swede in Germany
Home » Language and writing | About me Impressum Contact Sitemap

Idiocies of ad writing

I am often annoyed at the way advertisements and other texts intended for selling (and other kinds of convincing) are written. It is as if the authors had read a guide on writing quality non-literary texts—and then decided to do the exact opposite of what was recommended.


Side-note:

I suspect that there is an overlapping and paradoxical problem: That those of us who try to write well (not always successfully...) see our texts rejected by naive decision makers, who prefer texts full of advertising language, NLP tricks, and similar.

Another overlapping issue is that the more intelligent might be repulsed by a text that the less intelligent find acceptable and the outright dumb might find convincing. Advertising, in particular, usually seems deliberately geared at the less-than-bright. (And the one thing that the advertising industry is actually good at, I suspect, is to convince others that advertising brings enough value to justify the enormous amounts of spending that we see today.)


To illustrate, consider the following text:

The XXX excels through innovative technology and extraordinary ease of use. Learn to use this compact flyweight effortlessly and in no time, and discover the digital world to an unbeatably advantageous price. The XXX is ideally suited for the whole family and accompanies you into a new era of mobile technology.


Side-note:

This is a slightly modified translation of a German text. Due to the strong use of idiomatic phrases in the original, the translation might look a little odd; further it does not quite catch the absurd formulations of the original. Unfortunately, I could not find an original English text matching the low German standards on short notice.


The XXX excelsThis is a subjective statement that needs supporting proof.
through innovative technology Ditto; further, this was an ad for a computer, making the statement border-line tautological; further, innovative does not imply good, new, or rare.
and extraordinaryThis extraordinary [sic!] claim is almost certainly false.
ease of use.Everyone claims ease of use; it is almost never true. The statement, further, needs proof.
Learn to use Use of imperative in adverts is an unethical trick.
this compactIs sufficiently obviously true in context to be allowed; however, it is also redundant.
flyweightCheap rhetoric; a more descriptive word should be found.
effortlesslyAlmost certainly a lie.
and in no time,Definitely a lie...
and discoverImperative again.
the digital worldThe entire phrase following “and” is a cheap and pointless cliche.
to an unbeatablyDefinitely a lie...
advantageous price.Dubious. Needs proof.
The XXX is ideallyLogical impossibility and cliche.
suited for the whole familyHighly dubious, would need proof, and is a cliche.
and accompanies you into a new era of mobile technology.Same problem as for “digital world”.


Side-note:

The word “innovative” is extremely overused, to the point that it seems to be included in a blanket manner in some types of description. My advice would be to (a) never use it, (b) give mental minus points to anyone who does.



Side-note:

Ease of use (usability, etc.) is a problematic concept, in as far as it usually has very little to do with ease of use beyond the raw beginner—and this not limited to ad writing. Unfortunately, there is a growing misconception that ease of use and even usability (a wider concept) is defined solely by whether a technophobic beginner can handle the basic features of a product without reading the manual. How more advanced features can be handled, what options the power user has, etc., is given no consideration—often to the point that more advanced features are absent. Indeed, some software applications have removed features that they once had... (Firefox is a good example of this, during its seemingly deliberate attempts to commit suicide and to alienate existing users.)


Now let us try a version that considers the above. Some other changes are made to compensate for the destruction that would be caused by a blind use of the advice. Some speculation has been necessary, e.g. in that I assume that ease of use was a priority during development (else the text would need adaption). Further, it is assumed that no verification of the related intents is needed.

The XXX was developed using modern technologies with an eye on ease of use and speedy familiarization. It is an unusually cheap mobile computer. The XXX is intended to be suited for all family members.

The word “unusually” might be going to far, but without this word the entire sentence becomes so lacking in content that it should be cut it out entirely (“cheap mobile computer” was already known from context)—and the overall text would be too short. The claim “using modern technologies” is true, but also pointless and unnecessary, and could arguably be cut too. Also note that the last clause of the original text was reduced to the word “mobile” and moved to a different place in the text.

To bring the text down to its actual statement:

The XXX is intended to be easy to use and learn, and suited for all family members.

This provides an excellent illustration of advertising language—when the cliches that could be used for any related product and the unnecessary filler words are thrown out, the text can be reduced to more or less nothing. In fact, the remains of the above text are based on speculation and, considering that the claims are very common, possibly untrue or redundant—which would make the final text disappear altogether... The simple truth is that most advertising texts have very little, or even no, actual content. Unfortunately, the space available is seldom used to bring additional information to the users, but is instead filled with disguised nothing.

Of course, if I had been a consultant hired to replace the text, I would have thrown out the original entirely and written something better from scratch—patching a poor job is often a worse idea than starting over. I would also likely have taken an entirely different approach by including information that might actually be useful and/or pointing to any actual USP.


Addendum:

In a larger text on related issues, I point explicitly to the use of adjectives and adverbs as a source of evil in advertising. To revisit the above example in this light:

Merely throwing out some modifiers and a fragment without point without them, we land on:

The XXX excels through technology and ease of use. Learn to use this flyweight and discover the digital world. The XXX is suited for the whole family and accompanies you into a new era of mobile technology.

While this does not make the text acceptable, it brings a considerable improvement with very little effort.

(Not that the cut-down is not complete: Going further would distort meaning or force a new reduction to a trivial size.)