youthography: "Slang is da flava
by Daphne Gordon, The Toronto Star, Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Wassup with all the slang on TV these days?
Seems like corporate North America has increasingly been copping youthful slang in advertising campaigns, on television shows and newscasts, in product names and on corporate Web sites in an attempt to cash in on the increasingly powerful youth market.
A few prime examples:
A television ad announces the release of Star Wars: Episode II DVDs with the question "Who's da man?" and answer "Yo da man," while showing scenes of Yoda the Jedi elder fighting bad guys.
A new spot for Visa that aired on Superbowl Sunday in the U.S. riffed on the word "Yo," putting the word in the mouths of famed Chinese basketball player Yao Ming and baseball icon Yogi Berra.
A raft of youth-oriented products with the word "X-Treme" in the name has hit the market, ranging from potato chips to soft drinks, video games, magazines and even a cookbook called X-Treme Cuisine: An Adrenaline-Charged Cookbook For The Young At Heart.
A Web site for the hot Fox show Fastlane asks viewers if they're "pimp enough" (cool enough) to subscribe to the show's online newsletter.........
And, perhaps most surprisingly, a CNN Headline News producer advises his writers to use pop expressions on the air.
Then there was that terrible Cap'n Crunch commercial a few years back, he recalls, quoting its annoying jingle off the top of his head: 'Yo, yo, yo! The Crunch is superphat!'
'It's terrifying in its badness,' he scoffs. 'Kids just don't speak of brands with that kind of language. When would you see a kid picking up a box of cereal and calling it superphat? (phat means pretty hot and tempting). Maybe a CD by your favourite band would be superphat, but a cereal?'
While Valiquette seems to have a long mental list of commercials that use slang badly, he says marketers who wanted to speak to youth have long employed the technique. The fact that there are so many more products aimed at the youth market now makes it seem ubiquitous. "
by Daphne Gordon, The Toronto Star, Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Wassup with all the slang on TV these days?
Seems like corporate North America has increasingly been copping youthful slang in advertising campaigns, on television shows and newscasts, in product names and on corporate Web sites in an attempt to cash in on the increasingly powerful youth market.
A few prime examples:
A television ad announces the release of Star Wars: Episode II DVDs with the question "Who's da man?" and answer "Yo da man," while showing scenes of Yoda the Jedi elder fighting bad guys.
A new spot for Visa that aired on Superbowl Sunday in the U.S. riffed on the word "Yo," putting the word in the mouths of famed Chinese basketball player Yao Ming and baseball icon Yogi Berra.
A raft of youth-oriented products with the word "X-Treme" in the name has hit the market, ranging from potato chips to soft drinks, video games, magazines and even a cookbook called X-Treme Cuisine: An Adrenaline-Charged Cookbook For The Young At Heart.
A Web site for the hot Fox show Fastlane asks viewers if they're "pimp enough" (cool enough) to subscribe to the show's online newsletter.........
And, perhaps most surprisingly, a CNN Headline News producer advises his writers to use pop expressions on the air.
Then there was that terrible Cap'n Crunch commercial a few years back, he recalls, quoting its annoying jingle off the top of his head: 'Yo, yo, yo! The Crunch is superphat!'
'It's terrifying in its badness,' he scoffs. 'Kids just don't speak of brands with that kind of language. When would you see a kid picking up a box of cereal and calling it superphat? (phat means pretty hot and tempting). Maybe a CD by your favourite band would be superphat, but a cereal?'
While Valiquette seems to have a long mental list of commercials that use slang badly, he says marketers who wanted to speak to youth have long employed the technique. The fact that there are so many more products aimed at the youth market now makes it seem ubiquitous. "
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