The Wall of Shame

Back when I was in the newspaper biz, the editor-in-chief started up a "wall of shame" for press releases that ought to embarrass their authors. Many of these authors were supposedly pros -- hired-gun flaks employed to get the word out to the media with the written word.  So, when they spelled key words incorrectly, or misplaced their modifiers, it was a bit shocking.

I've kept that wall of shame going in my head since I left the paper. Typically, the new inductees are advertisers. Here are some samples:

Quiznos: For a while, Quiznos had a radio campaign titled something like "Unfair Match-Ups." The ads would compare a contest between a Quiznos toasted sub and a regular untoasted sub to ... oh, a team of accountants taking on a horde of killer ninjas.

I love the concept, but the writer in me would recoil every time I heard the ad because its parallelism backfired. Take another look at my sentence about the accountants and ninjas, and realize that this is precisely the order in which the sentences on the radio occurred:

• Quiznos is to untoasted as accountants are to ninja.
• Quiznos = accountants.
• Untoasted = ninjas.

I'm pretty sure that the company didn't want to suggest that the untoasted sub is superior, but that's precisely what the ad does say: An unfair match-up indeed.

Perhaps that's why they ultimately pulled those ads.

Power Automotive: I've only heard the ad once, and I was on the road at the time, so I won't be able to quote it word-for-word. However, it also backfires. The gist of the ad was that Power Automotive had set some sales record for California. The screw-up takes place over two sentences. Sentence A says something like "It set a sales record for California." Sentence B says, and this is pretty close to word-for-word: "It's not even close!"

If we assume "it" has the same referrent in each sentence, and if we speak English, we must, then Power Automotive is "not even close" to something, which -- even without knowing what the something is -- doesn't sound too good for Power.

EZ Lube & Tune: The billboard, just off the 60 Freeway, reads something like "Poor lubrication is like a piston with a wedgie." This is another potentially funny, clever slogan, completely derailed by inattention to writing. Lubrication is not like a piston. The author is trying to say "Not lubricating your engine is like giving your pistons a wedgie." But that's not what he said at all. Instead, the ad says poor lubrication (in all instances) is like a piston. I'll leave it to you to apply this theorem to other instances of lubrication unintended by the ad's author.