It’s been two years now since Angie’s List renamed itself Angi. This was done because, allegedly, “(W)e’re not just a list anymore. Customers were confined and constrained by the literal nature of the name.”
But both their TV ads and their website all but scream, “We used to be Angie’s List!” If you’re still encountering so much resistance from your customers after two years, perhaps it’s time to concede they’re comfortable with being confined and constrained.
Here’s a cute ad from Brooks shoes. Back in 1979, 1980 or so, they would take the back cover of Runner’s World.
Эти туфли убивают меня.
(Eti tufli ubivayut menya)
It’s Khrushchev (Хрущёв) banging his shoe on the podium at the UN. A fairly famous incident.
The slugline reads, “Sometimes a comfortable shoe can make all the difference in the world.”
Not being a Russian speaker, I took the magazine to my high school cross-country coach, Greg Baranoff, who is. And he started laughing at great length. When he finally caught his breath, he translated:
“These shoes are killing me!”
Lexicon. Mildly derivative of Bill Cosby’s routine of having a rhino for a pet. This takes it one step further, and refers to how servers sometimes get stuck with specials they know are dubious, but they have to flack to the diners anyway.
“Tonight we have artisanal, free-range rhino snot pie as our special dessert…”
By extension, anything hoisted on service people as something they have to enthuse over:
“Well, they seem all-in for the 7-cylinder hybrid sports wagon.”
”Rhino snot pie. I just loooove this car!”
…and I am not Canadien!
Lexicon, oddly enough. We’ll drop phrases from this (“…is just a suggestion!”) in all kinds of contexts.
This video was a parody of one that was a Labatt’s ad: