{"id":117250,"date":"2017-08-16T16:54:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T21:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/four-big-brand-grammar-gaffes-language-matters-much-marketing\/"},"modified":"2024-12-19T16:44:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T21:44:28","slug":"four-big-brand-grammar-gaffes-language-matters-much-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-ca\/insights\/blog\/creative\/four-big-brand-grammar-gaffes-language-matters-much-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Big-Brand Grammar Gaffes\u2014and Why Language Matters So Much in Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"

It can take time, effort and expertise to craft a compelling marketing message<\/a>. In fact, it’s all too easy to imagine the minute hand whirring around the clock\u2014and the associated expenses climbing\u2014as entire days are spent creating brand archetype word clouds, devising virulent hashtags and debating whether a flashy new subheading should call out “premium” or “superior” (“What if we go with ‘supremium’?”, says the fresh-faced copywriting intern).<\/p>\n

And yet it can all be for nothing when the building blocks of language are left as an afterthought. Those stray commas and absent apostrophes are not just an eyesore for grammar sticklers like me: they have the potential to shatter the illusion of your million-dollar message, stamping “AMATEUR HOUR” in big red letters across your otherwise-immaculate collateral.<\/p>\n

The very real cost of typos<\/h2>\n

Of course, it’s impossible to quantify exactly how many sales or conversions are lost due to problematic punctuation, but we have an idea: this much-cited 2013 study<\/a> from Global Lingo suggests that 59% of Britons would not use a company that had obvious grammatical or spelling mistakes on its website or in its marketing material. And when you consider that 74% of respondents in the same survey said they would notice the quality of grammar or spelling, you can conclude that language gaffes are almost always detrimental if they’re noticed. That’s significant.<\/p>\n

But it doesn’t happen to the big boys, right? Well, yes, of course it does. A more recent Acrolinx study<\/a> found that an astonishing 69% of the 340 companies surveyed\u2014all of which have $250 million or more in annual revenue\u2014are serving up content that fails to make the grade. And the effect is quantitative as well as qualitative: the lowest scorers saw their Alexa website traffic rankings decrease by 9%, while the top scorers saw theirs increase by 22%. None of the main offenders are named (boo!), but Kohl’s, Caterpillar and European mobile carrier EE are singled out for praise.<\/p>\n

The grammar hall of shame<\/h2>\n

So we know that it’s happening, and we know that it matters. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the more notable examples of big brands making big blunders\u2014and know that such misdemeanors against the English language may well have done unspecified damage to each company’s bottom line.<\/p>\n

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    Every noun counts<\/h3>\n

    Costing $166,666 per second<\/a>, it’s fair to say that Super Bowl commercials are not cheap. In fact, that rate suggests that SodaStream spent something like $5.3 million on their 2014 ad starring Scarlett Johansson<\/a> just for the airtime alone\u2014so you’d be forgiven for thinking they could spare a few dollars for a script editor. But it seems they didn’t, and pedants all over the world will forever remember the ghastly “Less sugar, less bottles” line for all the wrong reasons. (Clue: “bottle” is a count noun, so it should be “fewer”, not “less”.)<\/li>\n

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    Why is “their” there?<\/h3>\n

    Education brands have to pay particularly close attention to their punctuation. After all, nothing can erode confidence faster than a comma splice from those supposedly in the know. In fairness to Creative Kids Software, they retail rather than develop educational programs\u2014but there’s still no excuse for their unintentionally hilarious in-store signage: “So Fun, They Won’t Even Know Their Learning”. Honorable mention for this gem from the 2008 U.S. presidential election: “Student’s for McCain”.<\/li>\n

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