Profanity — although common enough in casual conversation and tolerated, if not accepted, in polite society — has become fair game in mass media advertising. Swear words, or their stand-ins, are popping up on TV, radio and even billboards.
I’m not talking about advertising on cable TV or the Web and other electronic channels. From what I’ve seen of those media, anything goes because specific audiences seek out the specific content they want.
But in the mainstream media, profanity and the words and phrases that stand in for the tasteless ones have no place.
Take, for example, the word “suck.” When I heard this word used in a chant at a hockey game some years ago, I was aghast. This used to be a bad word. But now many people use it without thinking twice.
A billboard on Sheridan Boulevard, advertising The Glo car wash, recently tried a play on this word, relying on an offensive connotation to get the reader’s attention: “A reviewer said our vacuums suck.” The company is likely betting — because of the ad’s hockey-chant shock value — that we’ll remember it. I remember it, but not for the reasons they intend. What comes to mind, of course, is the sexual connotation that made this a vulgar expression in the first place.
Stand-ins for profanity also reach for memorable wordplay by implying the word or phrase they replace. I’ve been guilty of this myself. As an advertising copywriter in the 1980s, I created an ad for a geotechnical company that read: “Dammed if we do, but not if we don’t.” I thought using a homonym for a word in a well-known phrase was a clever way to describe one of the company’s competencies.
However, rather than generate attention, the ad was dismissed as both frivolous and rude. As you might guess, it wasn’t effective, in part because of this swipe at a swear word. I haven’t been tempted to use profanity, in any guise, since.
Last year, Elitch’s (of all places) used the phrase “So flippin’ fun!” Sure, they were telling us their rides and water parks included the kind of fun that flips you around, but it doesn’t take most people very long to recognize that “flippin’ ” is one of many words that replace the F-word. And in a current TV ad that apparently features real people trying out Xfinity products, one woman calls her Internet speed “So flippin’ fast.” I don’t know if this woman would ever use the actual profanity, and her statement is so benign that, in an increasing complacency about profanity in public, we might not even notice. But it’s tasteless and unnecessary to include this comment in the ad.
Another current ad that leaves me with my mouth hanging open is from homebuilding company Taylor Morrison. In a radio spot, one woman tells another about a sales event, including great features and discounts on builder options in Taylor Morrison homes. The second woman exclaims: “Shut the front door!”
This phrase was scandalous the first time I heard a friend use it. Although “Shut the front door” is good for a giggle among friends, using phrases like this to replace profane expressions in advertising is simply offensive, especially when we can so easily recognize the actual meaning of such wordplay in its most derogatory sense.
As such profanity-in-disguise invades mainstream media advertising, we’ve opened the door for the crude counterparts themselves to make appearances that are far worse than a fan chant at an Avalanche-Red Wings hockey game.
Andrea W. Doray (a.doray@andreadoray.com) is a communication consultant, writer and editor, and is a creative writing instructor in the youth program at Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
