That’s a completely reasonable definition of amateur (the first one, in fact, according to the American Heritage Dictionary referenced by Answers.com) but not the thing that comes to my mind when I read the slogan. They’re explicitly putting themselves on the low end of the price scale (“budget” towing) and clearly implying that you, the reader, would think of professionals as expensive.
The straight, non-funny-in-the-way-they-mean-it reading of the slogan, for me, is “Think professionals are expensive? Try hiring us, we’re (budget) amateurs!”
I’d have no problem with the slogan if their name didn’t reference low cost, which just confuses things.
That’s kind of cute.
“You bet your Aspercreme” must not have gone over well with the clean-talking old people who are the prime market for the product. I noticed they changed it to “You Bet if it’s Aspercreme” or some such.
I think the debate as to whether “Head On! Apply directly to forehead!” is a good slogan or a bad slogan is misplaced. I believe the makers of Head On have actually gone beyond good and bad into some kind of Neitchian netherworld.
Of course, the greatest slogan of all times is the Church of the Subgenius’ “Eternal Salvation or Triple Your Money Back!”
The ad for Mucinex absolutely disgusts me. “Mucinex in, mucus out” I get it, I know what they are trying to say, but still, the mental images that phrase conjures up makes me certian that I will never buy their product.
That was exactly the reaction I had when driving around with those plates. And it also pretty much expressed my sentiments, too. (I don’t live there any more.)
This always made me think: Remember, they named it. That is to say, the same people who wrote the ads, and who could have called it anything they wanted.
And then the oh-so-reliable product was tainted by Toxic Shock Syndrome and disappeared, IIRC.
By any reasonable definition, America and Canada and the UK and Mexico are all Democracies. The definition you learned in grade school is nonsense concocted in a very different era.
which was pretty underwhelming. One Utah editorial cartoonist depicted an imaginary session of the guys who came up with this looking at a previous candidate:
“Utah. An OK state if you like that kind of thing, I guess.”
One of the consultants says “Maybe it needs another comma.”
Recently, the Washington Department of Community, Trade, Economic Development spent approximately $450,000 for a new, catchy tourism slogan. What they got for their money:SayWAPeople round these parts repeated the slogan a lot, but not necessarily with the desired inflection.
Sweden’s Wiki page says the April 30, 2006 estimate of the country’s population is 9,072,269, making it more populated than New York City by about a million, or about the population of just over three Chicagos or four and a half Houstons, or just under nine Dallases. Sweden is also less populated than the state of Georgia (9th-most populated) by about 300 people, or 9 million Swedes. The Swedish population is also comparable to about 18 Wyomings (Wyoming is the least populated state).
Just thought I’d provide some reference.
So does most of the rest of the developed world AFAIK, notably including 49 of the 50 United States.
There are overblown nutjobs everywhere, and you’ve listed two individuals who you said are leaders of equal-rights organizations. Frankly, equal-rights leaders sometimes have to say extreme things to get noticed. Even if that’s not what they’re doing, equality is their passion and they can get overly worked up about it. In a population of 9 million–again, comparable to New York City, where you could probably find many more than two people to agree with you on anything and at least two people who enjoy any dubious sexual fetish–I’m not surprised that two people who haven’t been elected by the nation’s populace to any particularly important post have made statements that seem a little extreme.
Cite?
Is this based on their refusal to officially apologize? I don’t know anything about that, so I can’t really debate you on that point.
The Swedish population is also comparable to about 18 Wyomings (Wyoming is the least populated state).