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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
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Rant of the day
There has been an explosion of posters and advertisements around Edinburgh in the last few weeks. The subject, the new GAP clothes range. To most people the posters are completely unintelligible. There is a picture of a young child in a warm outfit with the words “Holiday is Here” underneath. I have seen people looking wistfully at the poster with puzzled expressions. As they turn away, I can see them thinking, "Why is the child going on her holidays in such warm clothes? Perhaps she’s going on a trip to Lapland to see Father Christmas or maybe a skiing holiday?"
I assume that the advertisements refer to the impending Christmas season. We do make the most of the bank holidays over Christmas and New Year and schools close for a couple of weeks Christmas holidays but our main holiday is in the summer. People go on holidays at various times in the year but I would guess that for most people late November/early December is a relatively unlikely time to go holiday. We’re too busy doing our Christmas shopping.
Yes, I know that in America most of these are known as vacations (not a word in general use outside universities here) and holiday is only used for what we call bank holidays. I know that America has a significant Jewish population as well as many other religions so it is a convenient term more likely to include than alienate people …but …
If GAP want to have a stores in Britain or anywhere else for that matter, they should recognise that their global advertising campaigns should use words which can be understood unambiguously in the relevant country. I asked a member of staff to explain the words on the poster - she hadn’t realised what it meant. It isn’t even good marketing!!!
[/rant]
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old hand
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old hand
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Perhaps it's a play on the (Coke?) jingle: "Holidays are coming"? That's what I thought when I first saw it (South Ken station).  No doubt the switch from plural to singular is meant to give the grammar more of a childlike element...
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
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>"Holidays are coming"?
... and the goose is getting fat?
Must have missed that jingle, all I can remember is "I'd like to teach to world to sing" - terrific those New Seekers! I don't think Irn Bru could be described as the "Real Thing" but I do like the man on the building site ad.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
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My initial reaction is to relate it to the US publicity for the Hitchcock film "The Birds." The pre-release publicity posters screamed The Birds Is Coming. It was a "teaser" to build up interest. Yuk. I found it annoying and ungrammatical. The picture was excellent, though!
Are they touting a new line of winter-wear called "Holiday?"
You are correct : it is bad marketing.
wow
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Wait! Wait! Wait!
Department of Second Thoughts:
Is it bad marketing? We are talking about it, aren't we?
wow
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addict
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addict
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Jo,
I agree, it's inappropriate marketing. A couple of almost related comments:
The Americans have Thanksgiving at the end of November as well as Christmas at the end of December. When I was working in Chicago I found the 'holiday mood' kicked in far earlier than in any other place I'd worked. Now I work for an overseas subsidiary of an American company, dependent on the US for a lot of information and product, I find it frustrating because they didn't think to remind us in advance that their offices were going to be closed for a four day weekend, which added to time differences meant we wouldn't get responses to a question asked on Wednesday until the following Tuesday at the earliest...
I have bought clothing from a US retailer on-line. They now regularly send me catalogues. Their accounts department have noticed that in July Australia introduced a new tax and all the catalogues now include a note explaining the effect of this on prices for customers in Australia. Their marketing department have not yet noticed that December is summer in the southern hemisphere and it is not a good time to send catalogues advertising warm, fleecy, knitted, 'snug' clothing....
(NB - I am not against all things American! It just happens that there are a great many more American multinationals out there able to commit this kind of idiocy, so they are top of mind. ALso, I wonder whether having a larger domestic market they are able to get to a certain size and inflexibility before they have to learn the lessons of internationalisation?)
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 1,346 |
Department of Second Thoughts:
Is it bad marketing? We are talking about it, aren't we?You are indeed a Wise Old Woman!  I reckon you've hit the nail on the head m'dear.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
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Bad marketing
I'm not sure that people are talking about it. Have you heard anyone else talking about it Fishy? It's just knocking down another chink in the wall of national identity as yet another multi-national ignores our differences.
When Benetton show new born babies or death row prisoners then people seem to talk (rightly or wrongly). Most of the rest is barely noticed.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 347 |
>..before they have to learn the lessons of internationalisation
Bridget,
I can relate to what you are saying. I used to run the Australian/NZ software support centre for a US computer company. We had support analysts available to cover the working hours of customers across five time zones every day, unless it was a public holiday in ALL locations (about 6 days/year). Our US support headquarters - which provided "next level" support to us - worked 7.00am to 4.00pm only, and closed on every public holiday in their state.
It also used to irk me that they would use the names of northern hemisphere seasons for software release dates and on product catalogs. Use of the word "fall" just reinforced the impression that their world stopped at the US border.
Incidentally, that's also where I first came across the horrible "words" i18n and l10n for internationalization and localization respectively.
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