Earlier today, a blogger I follow on Twitter posted a picture of back-to-school Crocs she purchased for her son. Crocs sells shoes for fall? Who knew? I was excited to see that she also posted a link to a back-to-school promotional video the company put on YouTube. Wow. More than 900,000 views. I took a look, as these are precisely the kinds of initiatives we’re working on with our clients. It’s an animated, oftentimes trippy portrayal of how back-to-school Crocs cure the end of summer blues. Imagine my surprise when the words, “They ain’t got no holes, but I swear they’re still Crocs.” Never mind that the video later calls school miserable. Now I know a video that insists on sanitized messaging won’t go viral and certainly won’t resonate with youth. But while this video has a lot of views, it doesn’t seem to win over kids. Take a look at the comments to see what I mean.

Just after I saw the Crocs video, I noticed the debacle over JC Penney’s “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me” shirt. Of course, this item caused a major stir on social media channels and the company pulled the product and issued an apology. I never saw the product on JC Penney’s site, but the description that came up on Google said something like, “Who has time for homework when you have to check out the latest Justin Bieber album…”

Maybe I’m being naive or simply too stodgy. But I hope a brand’s ability to connect with today’s youth and respect for intellect are not mutually exclusive.

Once again, I am going to date myself as a child of the ‘80s. When I was a sophomore in high school, my English teacher, Mrs. Blum, was ready to boycott Toyota over their use of Ernest P. Worrell (of “Ernest Goes to Camp” fame) as a company spokesperson. While intended to poke fun at his clownish, good ol’ boy ways, his mispronunciation of epitome (“the epi-TOME of excellence”) totally unnerved her. She was concerned that young people watching television would follow in the footsteps of his mispronunciation. Even though I was in my prime “adults are clueless” years, I appreciated and never forgot her passionate take on the subject.

Fast forward to 2011 (I am now probably about the same age Mrs. Blum was back in my 10th grade classroom) and I am feeling the same kind of frustration. Last month, there was a mayoral election in North Bergen, NJ, a town near where I live. The winning (and incumbent!) mayor’s campaign slogan was, “I don’t know where you be from, but I be from North Bergen, son.” Seriously? I understand that some rules of grammar don’t apply in advertising. I can support ending a sentence with a preposition. Or even a one- or two-word sentence with no verb (like this one!). But, in my opinion, his campaign’s approach takes creative license way too far.

Just yesterday, I was driving out of Hoboken to take my son to the doctor in Wayne when I saw a billboard advertising a radio show. Its headline: “We be killin’ it.” Perhaps Mrs. Blum was right: We need to consider the impact these kinds of messages have on how children learn the language. As a marketing professional, I also think such butchering is potentially detrimental to the brands that allow it into their advertising.

Every so often, you learn about a new product and wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?” A former client contacted me a few weeks ago to tell me about a brilliant new product she had invented. It’s called PoopPac. That’s right, I said “poop” on our blog. Any dog lover knows what it’s like to carry their pet’s poo while looking for a trashcan. If you’re hiking, walking on the beach or strolling through a suburban neighborhood, it’s even more of an issue as trashcans are few and far between.

Susan, who lives in sunny Santa Barbara, California, was sitting on the beach one day watching dog owners awkwardly tote around bags of poo while they drank coffee, talked on cell phones, jogged and led otherwise normal lives. She wondered why there wasn’t some type of product available in which they could place the goods until they found a proper receptacle. And PoopPac was born.

PoopPac is, in essence, the industry’s first portable pet waste carrier. It is large enough to contain dog waste until the pet’s owner can find a trash can, yet small enough to carry comfortably. The carrier also has additional space to hold plastic bags for scooping and other essentials. 

Susan had introduced her product at a pet show a couple of weeks prior and was building quite the following on Facebook. I immediately agreed to write and issue her launch press release. Now I enjoy what I do for a living, but I will admit I’ve never had so much fun writing a press release. The stories, the jokes, the puns … they’re endless. And the media seem to agree. We immediately received a dozen requests for samples and photos. PoopPac was included in a blog on the Los Angeles Times website and received a positive review from a major radio station in California. While she can’t yet announce it, her product received an Editors’ Choice award from one of the top pet industry publications. She’s also booked on Warren Eckstein’s nationally syndicated radio program, “The Pet Show” next week. 

While I wish I’d thought of PoopPac, I sure am glad Susan thought of us to help her spread the word.

Abby Cadabby on her love of words!

When you communicate for a living, words are everything. You fixate on elements of language that most people do not even consider. Nothing (well, almost nothing) excites you more than finding a mistake in a major daily newspaper or reverse-engineering a politician’s speech to determine the writer’s objective.

In our business, we spend a lot of time working with clients to craft their messages to various audiences. In most cases, we’re not telling them what (the idea) to say, but how (the words) to say it so it resonates. The perception people have of you, your business or organization is largely dependent on your ability to tell your story. The words you choose shape people’s ideas and often comprise the lexicon they use to talk about you.

When I launched Rose Communications in 2003, I decided to name the firm after my great grandmother, Rose Ruth Shub, after whom I was named. It wasn’t my intention, but this single word choice resulted in people calling me Rose. I can understand how someone who meets me as the founder of Rose Communications would tend to call me Rose, even if I never introduced myself or closed an email with that name. But there are people who have known me for many years who transitioned from calling me Rosemary or Ro to Rose after I started the company. Fortunately, I am thrilled to honor her memory in this way.

The words you choose not to use are equally as important. I’ve worked with a number of spokespeople who used verbal crutches to fill silent moments or buy time between articulated thoughts. For example, an executive from one of the top technology companies in the world said, “That is there,” at the end of every third or fourth sentence of a presentation or interview. It obviously added no value to his message and was a major distraction. Other, more common phrases people tend to lean on include “at any rate” and “so forth and so on.”

Why am I blogging about this topic today? I was rereading recent blog posts when I uncovered an apparent verbal crutch of my own. In my two most recent posts, I used the phrase, “fast forward” to bring the reader to the present. When I also discovered the phrase in one of my colleague’s recent posts, I felt compelled to come clean.

Every e-mail, news release, speech or interview presents an opportunity to carefully consider the words you choose to communicate your ideas. And even those of us in the business can benefit from a good editor, as those words will often be repeated for days, weeks or even years to come.