Terry Levine | Noggin Advertising | Copywriter | Digital + Direct Writer | Blogging | Toronto | Canada

ROCK. PAPER. SCISSORS. (SANS PAPER.)

What does this have to do with advertising or copywriting? Not much. So sue me. It just made me laugh.  :-)

@NAUSEUM.

There are few things more irritating than someone trying to be cool who so clearly isn't. If you're not sure what I mean, watch Celine Dion's heart go on for five minutes -- if you can bear it.

Since the dawn of the internet age a decade and a half ago, one of the most transgressive examples of uncool is a corporation trying to hip up its image by using the @ symbol.

I seem to remember The Bay trying it with a tagline a few years ago -- it wasn't any cooler then -- with seemingly no appreciable change in its clientele or bottom line.

Now Mitsubishi Motors has gotten in the act with a tagline -- Drive@earth -- it thinks cleverly kills two birds and places it on the cutting edge of 21st century badassness.

See that cool @ there in the middle? See how cool it looks? And see how it coolly connects one of the most polluting activities in the history of the planet with, well, the cool albeit warming planet? Because you see, driving isn't just cool, it's cool for the environment too! Cool!

Let me put my cynicism on hold for a second. I like Mitsubishi cars. I think they're well designed and they actually do look pretty cool. And kudos to Mitsubishi for introducing electric (concept) cars that, er, no one can buy until at least 2010. (Sorry, a little cynicism crept in there -- I guess better 30 years late than never.)

But cool cars and future cool cars aside, no coolness comes from using @ in a tagline or ad campaign 15 years after it was sort of cool for five minutes. And there's certainly nothing cool about frankensteining a mostly polluting company with the earth.