Many years when I was working in a soft drink company, I saw Marketing people losing sleep over one innocuous line - Contains No Fruit. Contains Added Flavour.
It was a statutory requirement to include this line into every single advertisement. The print, television and outdoor ads had this line in font size 2.5 squeezed in the bottom right hand corner so as to not spoil the layout. The problem came in radio ads. In the 30-seconds one had for a radio spot, one had to look for voice-over artistes who could say the above line in less than a second. When heard on radio, the line ended up sounding like connofrooconadaflava!
Now, as our lives become more complicated with more than one insurance company, more than one investment option and more than one tobacco-selling company, I realised that these statutory warnings have also increased in number.
Obviously, the market for people who can speak unspeakably fast have also grown. I counted three of these warnings spoken at 552 miles per hour at the end of ads...
Chewing tobacco may be injurious to health.
Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation.
And the most complicated.
Mutual funds are subject to market risk. Please read the offer document carefully before investing.
With a really talented guy delivering the lines, this sounds like a gagged person trying to take his gag off.
It was a statutory requirement to include this line into every single advertisement. The print, television and outdoor ads had this line in font size 2.5 squeezed in the bottom right hand corner so as to not spoil the layout. The problem came in radio ads. In the 30-seconds one had for a radio spot, one had to look for voice-over artistes who could say the above line in less than a second. When heard on radio, the line ended up sounding like connofrooconadaflava!
Now, as our lives become more complicated with more than one insurance company, more than one investment option and more than one tobacco-selling company, I realised that these statutory warnings have also increased in number.
Obviously, the market for people who can speak unspeakably fast have also grown. I counted three of these warnings spoken at 552 miles per hour at the end of ads...
Chewing tobacco may be injurious to health.
Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation.
And the most complicated.
Mutual funds are subject to market risk. Please read the offer document carefully before investing.
With a really talented guy delivering the lines, this sounds like a gagged person trying to take his gag off.
Comments
@Iz: thanks for the insider information, Izzy! What would we do without ya? :0)