New TV Spot for Glade mixes up the metaphors
A lovely new commercial for Glade begins with the copy: "No one says to wake up and touch, see, taste or hear the roses. They say to wake up and smell the roses."
Well, actually "they" don't. The idiomatic phrase is "Wake up and smell the coffee" and is used when someone needs to a jolt to snap them back into reality. When someone needs to pay attention to what's really going on.
The idiom "Stop and smell the roses" is about taking the time to appreciate life, taking a break from mindless busyness to experience life's simple pleasures.
The first time I saw this spot I loved it — and I still do love it. It's everything you want a commercial to be: it engages the senses and the emotions with a phrase, that even if mangled, is memorable and ties the benefit to the product.
Of course, the spot uses one of the great techniques of advertising copywriting: "tweaking the cliché." That is, taking an idiomatic expression and giving it a twist, so that the reader gets the pleasure of seeing the familiar from a new angle. George Felton gives an example in his excellent book on copywriting with a headline from an ad for Investor's Business Daily:
Opportunity is knocking.
Or is that just your knees?
These kinds of headlines are always popular with both copywriters and readers. And one could claim that the writer of the Glade spot was trying to use this technique by mashing the two idioms together. I don't think so — I think it's simply a mistake. However, it manages to work even if it's not quite right. And as any number of my colleagues will tell you, I just get all curmudgeonly when phrases or idioms aren't used correctly.
Here's the spot:
Beautiful, isn't it? It had me all the way through until it got to the product — because air fresheners like Glade actually make me sick to my stomach. The only thing that smells worse in this category is a scented candle (which is why I avoid whole sections of Bed, Bath & Beyond). Still, this spot got me. And I'm sure that people who are in the target sweet spot will be moved to consider Glade.
As it turns out, I think about the idiom "stop and smell the roses" every day. Why? Because I have a dog, and he reminds me as we walk through the park to simply enjoy things, to take time and appreciate how all the senses are delighted by nature. However, if you own a dog, you know that if they could speak our language, their version of the idiom would be another kind of tweak of the cliché:
Take time to stop and smell the roses.
Then pee on them.
And that's another reason why I love advertising copywriting. You can really play with words and phrases.
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