- DoorMark Skoultchi
Of the
Just when I think I've seen all kinds of bad verbal branding, from terrible slogans to bizarre product and company names, along comes something that manages to shock me.
This time the credit goes toPhiladelphia cream cheese, if recentslogan creationis (get ready for) Pheel the Moment.The commercialis about a young, impossibly attractive and happy couple who share a large breakfast in bed. It's a predictable pastiche of warm, fuzzy moments to the tune of what I understand is Philly's theme song: "Spread a little love today." (Which would have made it a lot betterslogan, will think about it.)
Before you write me off as a whiner, let me say that I could have used the slogan "Feelingthe moment.' Of course, that would have been foolish, crazy and grandiose. (Just like cream cheese will actually help me feel the moment.) A typical commercial, in other words. But"Peel the Moment"? Real? It's beyond lame.
Yes, there's phish and phat and all that, but the "f"-reversed "ph" words have new meanings that go along with their new spelling and serve a linguistic purpose. The sole purpose of Philly's ploy is to show how far they will go to promote their own campaignbrand name.
Getting worse. According to a cooking blog I found, a recent Philly ad had the headline "Pheel Triumphant." (Could this be true?) And lest you think this is a recent anomaly, a brain fart of Philly's feverish marketers, I discovered a 2009 Philly commercial that ends with the line "Spread warm feelings." Compared to that, 'Pheel the moment' is practically poetry.
Sorry, Philly, we're removing some of your consonants until you learn how to use them.
Speaking of the 'f' word, you've noticed the latest newsUnilever's German advertising campaign for their low-calorie food lineYou can? Unilever advertises Du Darfst foods (which you can supposedly eat without feeling like you're on a diet) using the slogan“f*ck the diet.”(The slogan was toned down on Facebook to“F*** the diet.”)
Frankly, compared to Philly's corruption of the word "feel," I don't find Unilever's use of the mother of all "f" words terribly shocking. (Although some German consumers disagree.)
Of course, in America, apart from the censorship, a slogan is created"f*ck the Diet"wouldn't have been a smart play. The F-word is still too loaded here to be used in marketing, either in print or graphically (and I mean that in a design sense) without attracting more attention than the overall message it is conveying.
But I understand that in Germany the term is more widely used in the mainstream media and doesn't have the baggage that it does here. If so, then this bold yet conversational slogan, aimed at a teen-to-twenty audience fed up with the rules and restrictions of dieting, makes sense.f*ck the diet. Absolutely yes.
At least that's true, which is more than can be said for Philly's slogan "Pheel the moment." It's just messy.
Characters for Philly:P-H-A-I-L
Figure for Unilever:IN-
Last digit:
IN-
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