We copywriters go to such lengths to perfect the straplines we write that we can’t help mentally tweaking the ones we see in our daily lives. I’m terribly guilty of this, often standing on a tube platform thinking “you could remove two whole words from that line and it’d still work just as well”, or worse, boring people I know about why the line on that ad in the X Factor break didn’t quite work.
Usually, though, the changes I’d want to make are fairly minor. This is because the majority of straplines are well-crafted, highly-invested-in strings of words that rarely feature glaring errors or pitfalls.
This one, though, is baffling me:
It’s the new Nescafé Dolce Gusto strapline. Dolce Gusto is a range of home coffee machines using those little capsules, which come in a plethora of varieties from bog-standard espresso to double-caff skinny chocca mochaccino. Or something.
So let’s look at that line. “Coffee is not just black”.
I know what they were going for. Their pods come in a range of colours and flavours, putting a clever double meaning on the word “black” (black the colour, black the milkless coffee format). But at the same time, they’re implying that black is a negative thing. “Not just black” = “black is bad”.
Not only does this have minor racist overtones (though I’m not for a minute suggesting they intended them), but black doesn’t equate to “bad” in the common consciousness. Do you know what does? A well-known phrase that’s only two words longer, and would have totally redeemed this strapline.
Coffee is not just black and white.
Yes, it’s a cliché, but it transforms the “black is bad” message into one everyone recognises – that “black and white” means plain, simple, boring. Which is exactly what they were going for, and still works with the coffee metaphor.
I’m actually at a loss as to why they wouldn’t write the line this way. Did they have a strict word count? Did they eliminate the “and white” at the last second because they thought they didn’t need it?
Well, they did. I rarely advocate making a line longer, but in this case, “just black” is just wrong.
Tags: advertising, copy, copywriting, Dolce Gusto, fail, good copy, Interesting, marketing, Nescafe, Rants, straplines, Writing
