Is there anything worse that an ad that positively teeters on the brink of being extraordinary only to be hauled back (to mediocrity) by some typographical affectation?
I was reminded of this via a recent IBM ad, the bulk of this brand’s advertising having been pretty decent lately, that had a truly promising headline: “We can turn on a dime. If it’s a really, really big dime.” Very nice. Simple visual and we’re almost home.
Then I took a gander at the body copy.
And what did I see? Three boldface lines inserted somewhat randomly, the first reading: “Through yoga?”
Huh?
Now a normal person, which I’m probably not, would undoubtedly have quit right there. But I hung in, reading both the second and third boldface lines, which happily made a little more sense. Which prompted me to read all the body copy, word for word, at which point, even “through yoga?” made sense. (While also teeing up the question, “what is the world record for using “which” in a single paragraph, not counting Proust.)
But I have to ask: Why would anyone (normal) bother to go to this trouble? I don’t think they would. And in not doing so, they’d torpedo an otherwise swell ad.
Blame the Brits, who introduced “creative” typography to U.S. advertising and then left no guidelines for young art directors to abide by. Like use your fucking head to start with. If you’re going to call attention to a particular set of words, it might help if they bore some resemblance to a subhead and weren’t chosen capriciously for their “cuteness”.
Which isn’t to say art directors don’t sometimes have a thing or two to teach writers. Just ask my first partner, Susan Hoffman, who cured my verbosity almost instantaneously by simply acceding to my demand that she typeset every word I’d written for an ad we’d done together.
The copy came back in 4-point type.
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