#WW: The good, the good, & the bad.
Today’s edition of #wordsinthewild is brought to you by quaint places north of NYC.
I spotted “Wags, Whiskers & Wings” on St. Lawrence Street in Merrickville, ON. The antique shop, “Too Good To Be New” was also right across the street, and I was so tickled that I enlisted the help of a handsome fellow to model the sign. The truth is, I am a sucker for an evocative name. Throw in a little alliteration or something to chuckle at, and I’m totally sold. These businesses did that IMO.
This charming skincare clinic in Kingston, NY on the other hand, their word game was…not great 😅 I’m willing to bet good money that a copywriter did not write the line “self care begins with skincare” (which is not to say that every word from your business needs to be wordsmithed—that’s propaganda I will not push).
The trouble with the line is that it’s the sort of clever line that’s painfully not clever. It is flat, trite, and quite silly, if we’re being blunt. Unfortunately, it’s not silly in a brilliant “lines AI couldn’t write” a la Vikki Ross sort of way.
It’s a poor use of parallelism and rhyme. It doesn’t say anything novel or interesting. And it does sound like AI wrote it. It’s just a false statement in shiny letters. What’s unfortunate here is that something as simple as flipping the line might’ve helped: “Skincare begins with self care”
Sure, that’s not fetching a D&AD pencil, but it is certainly a more interesting place to start.
This is why writers matter.
*Oprah shrug*
Merrickville, ON
Merrickville, ON
