Tonight, a little diversion into the world of advertising phrases.
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Tonight’s Feature Presentation: Truth in Advertising
Not that these words and phrases are so much false, as just annoying twists on things that we already know. Re-defining things to make them seem newer or better than they otherwise might be. You’ll see what I mean as we go along.
Free Information Kit
Let’s get this out of the way up front, okay? There’s no such thing as a Free Information Kit. It’s advertising, people. Free Information Kits are advertising. The number of teevee commercials using this meme seems to be growing exponentially lately. “Call now for your Free Information Kit...” Be real. They are going to send you their advertising.
And yes, it’s free. Advertising nearly always is (but see below). Informative? Well maybe, but bear in mind that it is promotional material. You’re probably going to get a few pamphlets. Maybe a CD or DVD. Does that make it a kit? Don’t make me laugh.
[Brand Name] Cookbook
Sometimes this comes in the form of a few pages tucked into a magazine, or a pamphlet sized edition, all the way up to a full-fledged bound book. Store or manufacturer recipe collections, or cookbooks, are a staple of the advertising industry.
Kraft Foods used to publish recipe collections regularly (at least here in Canada, where I live). The unifying thing that these collections all have is that they feature, and insist that you use, a specific name-brand product.
And that’s OK, when it’s still free. You get what you pay for.
One of the cleverest marketing operations in years gone by was the Loblaw grocery chain in Canada. In the 1980s, the president of Loblaws Supermarkets was a fellow named Dave Nichol. During his tenure, the company debuted the President’s Choice line of private-label products. These were heavily promoted in Dave Nichol’s Insider Reports, a monthly multi-page insert in Canadian newspapers.
These chatty “reports” featured first-person accounts of Nichol’s adventures around the world, looking for new food sources to be imported and featured as President’s (i.e. his) Choice. He certainly had a huge influence on products and advertising, though much of the ad copy was probably written by professional ad people. Still, as the face and voice of the company in print and teevee advertising, Nichol (who left the company in 1994 and died in 2013) created a lot of buzz, and Loblaw continues to be Canada’s number one grocery chain to this day.
Anyway. One of the advertising features created under Nichol was the Dave Nichol Cookbook, still available on amazon now for pocket change. This was a full-feature paperback cookbook, which sold exclusively in Loblaw (and affiliated) stores in 1993. The recipes were wide-ranging, but of course each one featured one or more President’s Choice products.
Loblaw sold about 100,000 of these books, at $10 each. That’s a million bucks worth of advertising, that they got people to pay for!
And yes, I was one of them. I bought the book, knowing what it was. Because frankly, their products actually were (and still are) pretty good.
Take the book’s recipe for “The Perfect Roast Beef”. Dave advised me to get a bottle of President’s Choice Memories of Kobe marinade, and slather it all over a big chunk of prime rib. And I did. And you know what? Out of the bottle, that stuff smells horrid. Its ingredients include soy sauce, tamarind, garlic, ginger, balsamic, and other odds and ends. When I got finished rubbing the stuff all over the meat, I thought to myself: I’ve just totally ruined a very expensive piece of meat.
There was no choice but to plow ahead, and hope for the best.
And wouldn’t you know it, in the oven something magic happened. That turned out to be the best tasting roast beef I’d had up to that point in my life. And others agreed.
I eventually introduced this marinade to my family, and my partner’s family. His side took to it in a big way. To the point where, when any of them living overseas visit Canada now, they leave with fresh bottles of the stuff in their luggage. Even all the way to Hong Kong: family members take bottles of Memories of Kobe home with them, and serve the resulting beef to their friends. And they go nuts for it.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, some President’s Choice products were carried by various grocery stores spread around the U.S. As far as I can tell now, they are no longer sold in America.
It’s just as good
A year or so ago, on local radio there was a product being advertised that was going head-to-head with the long-established Ovaltine. I cannot now remember the name of that alternative product. My point here is that if the best you can do is say “buy this new thing, it’s just as good as Ovaltine” … it probably isn’t.
That phrase takes me all the way back to my early teenage years [mumble] decades ago, when A&W drive-ins were still a thing. You pulled up to a parking spot attached to the restaurant, and spoke your order into the adjacent menu/order sign. Then a waitress brought your order out to the car on a tray, to be hung off the driver’s side window. Great fun in rain or snow.
The big deal about A&W was root beer, served in a frosty mug. Something about that heavy glass mug, filled with root beer that partially crystallized around the edges of the ice-cold glass, was very satisfying.
But my dad, bless his heart, discovered that you could actually order the root beer in a paper quart carton, and get paper cups to pour into and drink it from. It was cheaper, apparently, though I don’t recall by how much, all these years later.
“It’s just as good”, my dad would say.
Except that it wasn’t.
Tape or cassette
If you’re old enough to remember K-Tel, you’ve likely heard something like “...tape or cassette, $9.99”. The tape they were referring to was the 8-track tape cartridge. Well, they are both tapes, and both cassettes, of a sort. The use of “tape” to refer exclusively to an 8-track cartridge was an advertising invention. And it ignored that the alternative format was also a tape. So the whole thing was technically ambiguous, though people quickly became accustomed to what they meant.
BTW, K-Tel started in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1962. It is still an ongoing business, though without the instant name-brand recognition it once had from its many, many teevee commercials. The company’s founder, Phil Kives, died just last week at the age of 87, in Winnipeg.
IMAX and theaters
While I’m on the topic of names being interchanged with other things in the same category, I recently heard a movie promo on the radio as “… opening in IMAX and theaters this Friday.”
Excuse me? I thought IMAX was a theater. Or a format of movie shown in a specific theater. So IMAX isn’t distinct from a theater, as “and theaters” would normally imply. It’s a particular kind of theater, sure, but it still is one.
So I’m a nitpicker. They should say “IMAX and regular-format theaters” or some such. Or “IMAX and IMAX 3D and regular and digital and 3D and Real-3D and AVX and 4DX ...”.
Yeah, I get it.
What’s on your mind tonight? Nitpicks? Complaints? Brickbats? Compliments? Free ice cream and ponies?
It’s an open thread, as always. Join in.
top comments for Tuesday May 3, 2016
From Angela Marx:
Long time no submission, but this just can't be overlooked...
comment by RiveroftheWest in Jen Hayden's story “Mom who dragged her singing children to standoffs loses custody, arrested for assaulting cop”.
Truer words? Never spoken. We all know at least ONE.
Thanks for your work TC Team!
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