Tuesday, January 15, 2008

"The Irish Economy Needs Lennox Estates..."

Some marketing claims go just a wee bit too far.

In a full page ad in the Sunday Times last weekend (January 13), Gordon & his team from Lennox Estates, looking slightly awkward, are pictured in a field on the shoreline, with their backs to the sea, and their shadows cast across themselves on the grass. It's a forced image - causing one to be distracted by the process behind the picture instead of the team message: you find yourself picturing the lot of them leaving the office in convoy (or did they arrange a bus?) and parking with difficulty on the side of the road and gathering around in the field uncertainly until the photographer arranged and rearranged them into some kind of order, and the nervous joking about who would stand where and whether the ladies should cross their hands in front of themselves and the men should button or unbotton jackets and so on.

Anyway, it's really the claim of the headline that's most problematic: that the Irish economy need Lennox Estates. Clearly it's not meant literally (- it is explained below that it is the level of professional service that Lennox Estates offers that the Irish economy needs; and one would think it needs a lot more besides before it needs that), but it goes too far and makes the whole ad collapse in on itself for not being able to take it seriously.

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