The Acrobatic Balancing Act of Advertisement

As language becomes increasingly informal - off-color language pervading the normal lexicon, slang becoming the prevalent method of speech – even advertisements have started to reflect this shift. Slogans are more provocative than they have ever been before. There are even some TV shows that have profanity in their titles!! This is a trend that would have scandalized the entire population 40 years ago. However, with the advent of the Internet, more informal and colloquial language has become acceptable across many fields. Yet advertisers walk on a tight rope between pleasing the younger consumers and alienating the older ones.

Advertising execs defend their choice of language as trying to stay current with the times. They say that by using this informal language it makes the customer feel as though a friend is recommending a product. The more frank and understandable the ad is, the more effective it is. However, this only works for very specific groups of the population. The advertisements containing vulgar words are normally targeted at younger populations who will appreciate, understand, and not be offended by the word usage. For example, the television show “Dance Your Ass Off” is normally watched by young women (18-30 years old) who have a sense of humor about the name. However, the advertisement companies still don’t want to offend the older generation. "Ass" has not been commonly accepted as polite vernacular. Instead, words such as “derriere” or “buttocks” were used in its place. Therefore, the show is advertised with the logo “Dance Your A** Off”. The explicative is merely implied instead of stated, a concession intended to make it somewhat more palatable to the older and more sensitive consumer. Even the general manager of Oxygen (the TV channel which airs Dance Your Ass Off) acknowledges “The title is a little bit controversial. In cable anything that is successful is usually a little polarizing.” However, this is a recurring problem with current advertisements. The gap between the generations is extremely pronounced when it comes to issues about language – especially in terms of sensibility in language. And because advertising is a distinctly public manifestation of this trend, there is normally conflict in this field.

Advertisers normally blame the shift to coarse language on changes in the public sphere or on the advent of the Internet. The Internet is more utilized by younger generations, so advertising accurately reflects this tendency. The Internet is a public sphere in which advertisers are allowed more freedom than, for example, on television. There are varying standards of what is acceptable on the Internet. Therefore, it is a good medium through which advertisers can be a bit more daring. There are still glaring inconsistencies between what is acceptable in various spheres of public life. Standards on television are very different from those on the Internet. This leads to some difficulty for advertisers trying to create slogans that work for both Internet and TV. How to define appropriate language will always be debated by the generations because each age group believes the phrases and words it used growing up should be the norm for society.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/business/media/14adco.html?src=busln