Superlatives, copywriting and why your packed lunch is telling you it’s ace
My sandwich has just told me that it’s amazing. It claims its lettuce is sweeter and crunchier than munching on a narwhal’s salty tusk. It is forcibly suggesting that a single nibble of its ham is like being kneed in the windpipe by Jesus. I’m actually too intimidated to eat it.
Rather than write a blog that arduously guides you through my dietary adventures, I’ve actually been inspired by my worryingly confident sandwich to think about a peculiar evolution of the positive, comparative and superlative forms in copywriting.
On more than one occasion my understanding of rudimentary grammar has been likened to a flamingo’s comprehension of badminton. But in this instance, I am not only surprisingly conscious of the three degrees of comparative language, but also strangely anxious about using them. Increasingly, much of the copy I see is playing fast and loose with the three forms of comparison. Or should that be faster and looser? Fastest and loosest?
Items of food and drink do seem to the most frequent and excessive culprits. Much like my cocky sandwich, it’s not untypical for a fizzy drink to describe itself with a fistful of superlatives. What’s more, this barrage of excessive self-aggrandisement is rarely punctuated with more than a few adjoining words, almost as if any term that isn’t a synonym for ‘incredible’ is merely a waste of the word count.
Ultimately, this leaves us with a great deal of copy that is so preoccupied with telling us how incomparably ace the product is, it seems not to notice that the message is so laden with superlatives it has become noisily meaningless.
There is also a certain reader immunity to superlatives that copywriters should only take part of the blame for. A significant portion of the blame must also go to the brands and businesses who mistake salesmanship for penmanship. Telling people in the most hyperbolic terms possible how fantastic your stuff is is a very different approach to speaking in a substantial and purposeful brand tone of voice. Ultimately all this does is reduce our most impactful, evocative words to anaemic chatter.
It’s tempting to simply list how good something is. Often it’s the easiest way to get in and out of a product description without getting your corduroy elbow patches dirty. But, understanding when it is and isn’t appropriate for each of the three forms restores impact and fluency to each of them.
That’s not to say we should stop letting our sandwiches tell us what to think. It just means they don’t need to be dicks about it.