Today, as I was checking my e-mail, I ran across what appeared to be some UCE from Purina, aka the company that brought you Dog Chow®. I’m not sure I know how I got on their mailing list; all I can think of is that, when signing up for some service or registering some product’s warranty, I must have failed to check a box that states that I don’t want my name and e-mail address passed on to another “premiere partner” or somesuch. Anyways, I have an e-mail from Purina.
In said e-mail, the marketing flaks who write the florid prose contained therein are gushing all about the launch of their new, state-of-the-art1 website promoting all manner of stuff to feed Fido or Fluffy. All this doesn’t faze me a bit, and my finger was poised over the delete button until my eye scanned the company’s new tagline:
Purina: Your pet, our passion.
My brain locked up. I’ve heard something vaguely like that before. In fact, I’ve been hearing something like that every single morning while listening to NPR on my way to work for the last year. This company (you may have heard of them) is underwriting Morning Edition and All Things Considered on NPR, and so I hear their tagline all the time:
Microsoft. Your potential. Our passion.
Microsoft was first, I do believe, as they’ve been using this little chestnut since 2004. Purina seems to be a latecomer in the passion play. I’m guessing that Purina’s marketing team doesn’t read computer trade rags or listen to NPR, because if they did, then they’d probably realize that their idea was about as fresh as a ten-year-old bag of Alpo. Sure, they substituted a comma for the first period, which subtly changes the meaning a bit (i.e. Purina is passionate about your pet2; Microsoft has passion which, when turned into computer software using a special kind of alchemy only known to Steve Ballmer, can be used to leverage your nascent potential), but all the same it’s a damn rip-off and you know it3.
Creativity (or lack thereof) aside, I believe that all this talk about “passion” from corporate giants signals that we may be in the midst of a passion epidemic. Everybody needs to have passion. It’s not enough to do a good job at work. NO! You must be passionate! Ready to spring into action to develop the best product ever made, no matter if it is a new formula for Fancy Feast4 or LonghornVista. And don’t forget Mel, who was passionate about The Passion!
Anyways, when a MarketRoid says someone or some company is “passionate”, what he/she/it really means is that the entity they are speaking of is maniacally focused, i.e. willing to put everything (family, health, sanity) on the line to bring you better things. So, it is evidently good to care about one thing to the exclusion of all others. Howard Hughes may be the touchstone for this ideal, except for the part where he allegedly saved his urine in jars.
I was going somewhere with this, but it’s now late at night, and I’m tired. So, in sum:
- Look, two unintendedly-similar marketing phrases, both kind of dumb!
- Passion is bad, except when it is good. It is always good at work, probably questionable otherwise.
- Lemon curry?
EXERCISE: Write your own tagline for a product, real or imagined, by filling in the blanks and submit it in comments. It has to fit this form:
Blank. Your blank. Our blank.
Funniest entry wins a laugh. HA, HA!
1 Is it Flash-heavy? You betcha!
2 But not in the way that Rick Santorum might be.
3 Same alliteration, too!
4 Speaking of passion in the “anger” sense, I really do hate that Persian cat who is finicky enough to have to eat Fancy Feast out of a lead crystal goblet. Anyone else? (Aside: I like this bit from David Aldridge from McSweeneys.)