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Oliver Cross: Advertising slogans and British reserve
Woodhouse resident and YEP columnist Oliver Cross talks advertising slogans and British reserve.
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Slogan's fun
The most effective advertising slogan I've seen recently was either invented by a really sharp executive or a pigeon sitting on the office windowsill.
(Here I was going to say 'or the office cleaner' but you can't, in the present employment climate, any longer assume that the office cleaner is less qualified than the office executive, so I've decided it's safer to insult pigeons, particularly as I've taken the precaution of wearing my shower cap).
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Anyway, the slogan, on a bus service from Leeds to Tadcaster and York, says, "You can't really park in York." No strange grammar, no puns, no sharp-talking, just a conversational, low-key, economical exposition of the best reason any car driver on the route might switch to bus travel.
Sometimes, using the kind of half-wit paradoxes thrusting executives like to spout, you might say: "More clever is less clever."
And, on a somehow related theme, which blithering idiot, in an act of corporate stupidity decided (probably ages ago, but I'm slow to catch up) that it would be a good idea to change the name of Leeds Grammar School to The Grammar School at Leeds?
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Um, probably a very distinguished head teacher and board of governors taking advice from experienced consultants, but that doesn't make the modish name-change any less depressing or meaningless, and what was I saying a moment ago about more clever being less clever?
I wasn't forward about her back
This is why I don't like being reserved and British. On the bus this week I sat behind a young woman wearing a strappy summer top which showed quite a lot of her extensively-tattooed back.
On her left shoulder blade were 'Mum' and 'Dad' centred on a loveheart and below the heart was a list of names which I couldn't see in full – something like William, Stephen, Lorraine and two or three others, who I assumed were her siblings.
Why I find my reaction to the tattoos so regrettably British is that I felt embarrassed reading them, even though a tattoo on a lightly-dressed summer day is really a public document, like a wall poster in Beijing. I worried that I was prying or being intrusive or in some other way betraying my British heritage by reading it.
But all the time I wanted to see the full list of siblings, which, reading downwards, was cut off by the top of the young woman's top.
There could have been a huge number of hidden names; it could have been the biggest family in Leeds but now I'll never know because I couldn't bring myself to say "Excuse me, those are lovely tattoos" (they were) "can I please see the full siblings list because I love large families and it's great that you should be so proud of yours?"
I think the young woman would have appreciated somebody enjoying her tattoos, which involved a lot more thought and time than most tattoos.
She would have been pleased with them and her family and might have also been pleased by a stranger taking notice, but I missed the chance to give her a moment of lightness and myself the chance to satisfy my own curiosity because, well – and I've been struggling to find the right word, but I think this is it – I'm a dweeb.
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Weather for Leeds
Saturday 19 May 2012
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