A small but perfectly formed email debate has been going on between various just-auto staff writers and freelancers today, following an edict from yours truly in the role of, for my sins, editorial style watchdog. Do we finally bow, at gunpoint in my case, to grammatical travesties such as Mazda5, Kia’s pro_cee’d, VW’s up! as well as MINI and SEAT’s insistence on capitals or do we do it the proper way some of us can remember being drummed into us as much as 50 years ago?
I guess this is automotive marketeers’ way of trying to make their new products, and media promotion of same, stand out in an industry whose relationships with media, advertising industry and vehicle buying public are very different from even 30 years ago when I started as a motoring industry writer.
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I’m wondering, though, whether such innovative pushing of the good-grammar-and-spelling boundaries might eventually backfire on the automakers – and those makers of many other consumer durables – in these days of Twitter, Facebook and the ability to comment on most stories published online.
The standard of spelling and grammar allowed through onto websites by some newspaper and magazine reader feedback moderators would be enough to set Sister Mary Wotshername who taught me grammar in about 1964 spinning in her grave.
Yet, over the years, I’ve heard many an auto industry marketing wonk spout phrases like ‘uniform media plan’, ‘everyone on the same page’, ‘consistent marketing message’ and so on.
Then some of ’em dream up product names like Kia’s cee’d and variants or ad campaign taglines like SHIFT_unexpected (or whatever it was Nissan used for a while) which even we, having listened through the product presentations and with daily contact with the industry, have trouble remembering how to type correctly.
All this gives great potential for those using social media to get it ‘orribly wrong making the posts and tweets, etc, the industry likes to encourage so much as part of today’s multi-platform marketing mix – so much for uniform messages.
If you’ve been involved in such decisions, we’d love to hear your side. Meanwhile, I’m having trouble getting it all right myself, and dealing with the insurrection in our ranks…
