So my wife is teaching her the basics including the idea that perfume should work at an almost subliminal level. Just use a hint and let the subconscious mind of your impressees do the rest of the work. It is not the done thing to walk like PigPen through life, surrounded by your own electron cloud of scent that announces your presence several hours before your actual arrival.
I think this is a lesson that could well be learned by copy writers. Adjectives are like perfume - just a little at the wrists and a dab on the neck will do; you don't need to PigPen your writing with them.
The toilet spray in my bathroom describes itself as "Delicious vanilla with smooth, luscious cream and revitalising freshness". Firstly, it's toilet spray, not something from a boutique bakery so they are probably the wrong adjectives - unless the user is a chromer with refined sensibilities,
(Chroming - in case the word is not universal - is deliberate inhaling of aerosols, paints, glue etc to achieve some kind of high - and presumably do a makeover job on your brain).
Secondly, there are five adjectives in that sentence and I'm none the wiser for it. The imagery created in my mind is not that of a bathroom that someone - ideally someone else - has brought to a wonderful state of cleanliness, it's just a blur. By the time I've waded through this adjectival treacle, I've lost all memory of where I started.
The vacant shop proclaims, in bold lettering, that I will have an invigorating time enjoying the exciting new retail experience that is opening soon. PigPen! All this means is that the shop is "For lease".Or "leasing" or "leasing now" or "grow your business here" or whichever bizarre variant the real estate agent has come up with.
Just as certain scents age, become the purview of grandmothers and finally go extinct, I think it's time to retire certain adjectives from copy writing. "Advanced" doesn't mean anything anymore, nor does "Premium". Although I might be being a little harsh on that last one. "Premium" does mean "the service you actually want for which you now have to pay more than you used to", but it's not a major selling point for your customers.
People who write the copy on products made for children are the worst. Hmm, more correctly, people who write copy on products designed to be attractive to adults who have no idea what to buy for children are the worst. "Endless Hours of Fantastic Fun for the Whole Family!" PigPen! Nothing is fun for a whole family. Board games are just what the homophone would suggest when you're over twelve and under forty. Unless it's Twister in which case it's only fun for the parents - after the kids have gone to bed. And something is either self-evidently fun to kids or it's not. The adjective doesn't make it more so, in fact it sounds kind of desperate. Rather like the adult wandering, lost, through the labyrinth, dying to find something that will keep the kids busy and out of his hair for more than ten minutes. And you know kids can smell desperation like blood in the water. If they think for a moment that you aren't in control, the feeding frenzy will begin.
In fact desperation seems to be exactly what many of our copy writers are suffering from. They have been given the near impossible task of hyping up something that it inherently nondescript. Shampoo, toilet freshener, Scrabble, socks, tomato sauce .... Somehow, even on a bad day, they must struggle to make your use of said product sound like a truly fulfilling and ego affirming experience.
If, of course, anybody ever bothers to read what they write.
I wonder what their job satisfaction levels are like...
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