Coke. Izzit.
From e-mails exchanged last year between David Armstrong, a former English teacher, and employees of The Coca-Cola Company.
Lifted from the July issue of Harper’s Magazine.
To The Coca-Cola Company,
The slogan for Dasani mineral water contains an egregious error. The tag line is “Treat yourself well. Everyday.” The word “everyday” is an adjective that is used to describe things that are routine or ordinary. “Everyday concerns” or “everyday life” would be two examples.
Your slogan should read: “Treat yourself well. Every day.” In this case “every” is an adjective modifying the noun “day.” This is a popular construction which is also used in such phrases as “every week,” “every time,” “every breath I take,” etc.
[… ]
Respectfully submitted,
David Armstrong
Thank you for contacting The Coca-Cola Company, Mr. Armstrong. We appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns regarding our new slogan for DASANI, “Treat yourself well. Everyday.”
Advertising slogans aren’t always constrained by the traditional conventions of formal writing; compromises are quite often made to develop a more effective message. When forming the new slogan for DASANI, we considered both “Everyday” and “Every day.” After subjecting both versions to testing, we decided to use the more impactful adjective form, rather than the adjective-noun phrase. […]
Joy
Industry and Consumer Affairs
The Coca-Cola Company
Dear Joy,
Thank you for your prompt and informative response to my email message. I do appreciate you taking the time. I must confess, however, that I am not completely satisfied with your answer. I fail to see how the adjective “everyday,” which has a completely different meaning than the phrase “every day,” is more “impactful.” (By the way, “impactful” is not listed as a word in any dictionary that I am aware of. Was this neologism spawned by the person who hatched your Dasani slogan?)
You say you chose the “adjective form,” as if you were choosing between two versions of the same thing – but the similarity is purely superficial.
Your slogan may as well read “Treat yourself well. Ordinary,” or “Treat yourself well. Commonplace,” because that is what it means, given the error.
[… ]
Are we then to assume that poor grammar and abuse of the English language make for more effective marketing? If this is the case I have a couple of suggestions for future slogans you may wish to consider:
“Coke. Its the real thing.”
“All ways Coca-Cola.”
“Coke add’s life.”
[… ]
Best regards,
David Armstrong
Thank you for your reply. We truly appreciate your feedback regarding our slogan for DASANI, and I will share it with the appropriate management. As for the word “impactful,” this is simply the noun form of “impact” with the suffix “-ful” added to the end in order for it to be used as an adjective. Words with suffixes are typically not in the dictionary.
Rich Robinson
Advertising Specialist
The Coca-Cola Company
Dear Rich,
It has been a few days since our email exchange and I have yet to hear from your executives. [… ]
Your fine and reputable firm needs to act swiftly to repair this grievous attack on the English language, one which I have now seen plastered on the sides of buses, on billboards, and in numerous other public locations. Have you considered the effect of your nonsensical “Treat yourself well. Everyday” campaign on the nation’s schoolchildren?
[… ]
In closing, although I appreciate the creativity of your comments that “Words without suffixes are typically not in the dictionary,” I believe that if you research this further you will find that many words with suffixes are in fact in the dictionary, and that words that are not words are not.
Warm regards,
David Armstrong
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Comment
- I bet David Foster Wallace is behind this.
— Jul 3, 6:22am # - David Foster Wallace must be behind this one, it’s so damn impactful…
— ale piana Jul 3, 6:29am # - Impactful is a perfectly cromulent word.
— The Word Jul 3, 9:31am # - Das anus!
— Jul 3, 9:56am # - My vocabulary has just been embiggened by ‘cromulent’.
— cdc Jul 3, 10:05am # - Well, thank god for those paper-work-filler-outers.
— Doug Jul 3, 1:08pm # - I saw this earlier and almost typed it out for my own blog…I have not laughed so hard in quite a while. As a writer/editor for a huge international corporation, I can say this is not the most egregious offence ever committed in the realm of corporate communication. And despite advise from professionals like myself, the final content decisions are usually made by morons higher up in the management food chain.
— Beerzie Boy Jul 3, 1:36pm # - From the Coca-Cola website:
“Diet Coke is the perfect drink to accompany your sense of self…With Diet Coke close at hand, who knows what kind of scenario you might get into!”
Now, I always wondered what to serve with ‘self’, and I’m always up for an unexpected ‘scenario’... I’m sold!
— Sharif Jul 3, 1:38pm # - If I drink DASANI water, will the girls be all up ons? (See http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail77.html for clarification)
— Warren Jul 3, 2:25pm # - Wonderful! I have been arguing with people about using impactful since I was instructed to use it in a press release a few years ago. I am so glad that someone has pointed out in such a funny and intelligent way that it is not a word … thanks for the laugh Gail.
— Hillary Jul 3, 5:29pm # - I used to do freelance work for an agency called Impact. Can you imagine how they loved the non-word ‘impactful’? I’m still amazed they never got around to coining ‘impactification’. I am less amazed that they don’t exist any more.
— Phineas Jul 3, 6:00pm # - so when do we take Apple to task for their grammatically incorrect (though perfectly cromulent) “Think Different”?
— dlt Jul 3, 6:03pm # - To sharif (who don’t like it, evidently):
You forgot that Diet Coke [is] your sass. It’s [also] doing what makes you happy.
So, let me get this straight. Whatever makes me happy, Diet Coke is doing it RIGHT NOW?
I’d better check on my wife.
— smerp! Jul 4, 12:10pm # - Impactful bowels. Everyday.
— Ray Jul 4, 7:02pm # - This is a funny exchange, no doubt about it. I hope you don’t mind a bit of a quibble, though. Since the author of the letters to Coke is an English teacher, I wonder that he says, “I appreciate you taking the time.” Shouldn’t that be “your taking the time”? Also, I had always heard that it’s “different from,” not “different than”—but Mr. Armstrong says, ”...a completely different meaning than….”
(Just a grouchy old ex-English teacher here)
— wordhord Jul 6, 1:09am # - Ha! Too funny (and sad). I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at “impactful,” as I am still fighting a losing (lost?) battle to force my students to acknowledge the difference between “impact” and “effect.” (I have been tempted to hurl something forcefully at another object to demonstrate the original power of the former’s former connotation—and to relieve the stress its weakened form causes me.)
— Rana Jul 8, 1:59am # - Now I want a dictionary of words that are not words. Let’s call it “Rich Robinson’s Bigged-Up Book of Suffixticated Ad Copy”.
— palinode Jul 8, 3:28am # - i think this guy’s essentially right about “every day”, but it’s not a black-and-white case because certain combinations are fixed in the lexicon, like “everyone”, “everybody”, etc, and a case could be made for “everyday” as a fixed unit with the sense of “every day”, in which case both spellings would be fine. in an advertising register, the more concise and impactful spelling of “everyday” is a better choice.
if he was such an expert on English, maybe he’d know that “every” is not an adjective, but a quantifier.
he’s definitely an idiot for that lame “not in the dictionary” line. “impactful” is most certainly a perfect English word, and an impactful one at that. why do so many well-educated people insist on self-righteous prescriptive grammatical beliefs? English according to the fiat of some schmuck. it would take all of five minutes reading an intro to linguistics textbook to be disabused of this nonsensical perspective.
— mp Jul 8, 5:36pm # - Has “mp” (8 July) never heard of capital letters?
Or has his keyboard gone on the blink?
— Dan Jul 9, 6:28pm # - mp cummings
— Jul 10, 5:26am # - all this bad grammar bothers me too, but remember: today’s correct grammar was most likely the bad grammar of one hundred years ago. Get used to it—language changes.
— Jul 11, 9:10pm # - mp must think that American dictionaries are the standard for English, assuming he found impactful in such a dictionary. Any country that uses abominations like ez for easy, or qwik for quick, can never be taken seriously as an authority on language usage.
For your information mp the Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority with regards to the use, definition and etymology of words in the English language. Perhaps impactful is a word in American but it is not a word in English. It does not exist in the OED.
— The_Dynamic_Driveler Jul 12, 3:27pm # - This reminds me of when Coke were using the phrase “Coke Is It!” – when it got translated directly into japanese it read as “Coke Exists!” which is the kind of advertising I think should be the norm.
I’m sure they used it but I think it was only for a little while: they then came up with a phrase in Japanese that captured the spirit of the English one rather than a literal translation.
— Jackie McGhee Jul 13, 1:27pm # - mp surprises me – in distinguishing between an adjective and a qualifier, he fails to use the subjunctive! O the horror! (“If he were such an expert…)
I’d like to thank the commentors who added “embiggened” and “suffixicated” to my vocabulary, and a mouthful of Coke to my nasal passages and monitor screen. Great way to start the day (“this post and comments,” not “snerking a mouthful of Coke,” that is).
— elayne Jul 15, 8:58am # - all those “language changes” people are another problem….*yawn*......learn the rules and follow ‘em, Jack.
— ML Jul 18, 11:27am # - I don’t mind linguistic changes if they enrich the language—if they add new concepts, reflect changing meanings, offer new subtleties, etc. What bugs me is when perfectly decent words are cast off in favor of simpler (usually more stupid) replacements, like “lite” or “e-z” or “lo-fat.”
— Rana Jul 19, 3:52pm # - Your entertaining entry brings to mind an episode of As It Happens, one of CBC Radio One’s premier series, which recounted an exciting correspondence between the newly-minted American Apostrophe Association and Albertsons [sic], a US-based chain of grocery stores.
— Alex Jul 26, 9:01pm #
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