January 16, 2006

English?

I was driving through Sonoma County when I saw a billboard advertisement for the Mini car, which said:

A GENUINE MINI SIPS
NOT GUZZLES

Now I don't know much 'bout conjunctive prepositions or sub-laxative accusative clauses ... but that's just plain wrong! It sounds wrong; it jars my senses.

There are so many ways they could have written it which would have been more correct, such as:

A GENUINE MINI SIPS
IT DOESN'T GUZZLE

A GENUINE MINI WILL SIP
NOT GUZZLE

A GENUINE MINI SIPS
NEVER GUZZLES

A GENUINE MINI DOESN'T GUZZLE
IT SIPS

Now this guy or gal who put this together: they work for the marketing department of BMW. So it's like, they're paid to use words; they're paid by a very successful and very high quality company. And they've spent however many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on this advertising campaign: printing, distribution, rent, and so on. And so I'm an engineer and this jars with me; so what does that say? That says: standards are pretty low. That says: there's probably a whole lot of opportunity in the marketing business. But it also could say: learn Spanish, quick.

Addendum: I don't watch TV, so I was not aware of the "Genuine Mini" advertisement campaign. I went online since writing this article and took a look; it's actually a very funny and well put together campaign. So I guess that poster was just an accident; we all have them.