Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S5E06 - Words Invented By Marketers

Episode Date: February 12, 2016

This week, we explore words invented by marketers. Many of those words found their way into the dictionary and have become part of our daily language, like “Dependability” and “Halitosis.” While some other familiar words like Retsyn and Fahrvergnugen were around for a short time, then disappeared into the annals of commercial history. We’ll also get to the bottom of Corinthian Leather. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 5, 2016. Your teeth look whiter than noon, noon, noon!

You're not you when you're hungry. You're in good hands with all the teeth. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. 55 seconds left in the penalty, a minute and 27 seconds left in regulation time. Boston 4, Montreal 3. LeFleur coming out rather gingerly on the right side. He gives it in to LeMire, back to LeFleur. In the history of Hockey Night in Canada, there have been many great play-by-play announcers. One of the best was Danny Gallivan.

Born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Gallivan was an athlete who excelled at baseball. He began his broadcasting career at a small radio station in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. When the war interrupted, he spent time overseas, then returned to radio as a sportscaster in Halifax, becoming the voice of the St. Mary's Junior Hockey team. That's where he was spotted by a CBC Hockey Night in Canada producer.

When the regular Montreal announcer fell ill one night, Gallivan was tapped to step in. He didn't know many of the opposing players. Then again, it was the first NHL game he had ever seen. Two years later, in 1952, Danny Gallivan became the NHL's Montreal play-by-play man and would hold that position for 32 years until he retired in 1984. In Montreal, the seventh and final game in the 1965 Stanley Cup Final Series. This is it. They have boiled this series down to one game.

The winner gets the Stanley Cup tonight. And in the net for the Canadians, the surprise starter, Gump Worsley. Now here's Balibol going in on the left wing boards. He shoots at the rebound. It's picked up by Kenny Warren. Warren loses it. His roots are turning. He's sent it away to front.

They score! Balabal, here's the replay. Danny Gallivan had an utterly unique style and a remarkable ability to describe not just the action of an NHL hockey game, but also its moods and momentum. Without question, he had an original way with words. For example, Guy Lafleur wouldn't start slowly across the center line.

He would make his way gingerly across the center line. Goalie Glenn Hall would kick out his pad in a rapier-like fashion. Pucks got caught up in Gump Worsley's paraphernalia. Henri Richard was firing a multitudinous amount of shots. Or there might be a

look of consternation on the countenance of coach Scotty Bowman. But more than anything, Gallivan is remembered for the words he made up. Slapshots became cannonading drives. A quick 360-degree turn became a Savardian spinorama. Spinorama eventually made its way into Canadian dictionaries.

And when a professor once wrote to Gallivan saying there was no such word as canonating, Galavan replied, there is now. The world of marketing also has its Galavanisms. Over the years, many words have been completely made up by copywriters. Some of those words became nouns, some became adjectives, while others became the names of famous products. But what you may not know is that many of the words we use in our everyday language

began life as advertising copy. Like any industry, marketing has its own language. There are familiar phrases. Act now. Limited time only. But that's not all. There are familiar sales. Don't miss Black Friday. Don't miss our Boxing Day sale. Don't miss the Bosses Away sale. And familiar conditions. But the language of marketing has also coined its own words.

Where an appropriate noun wasn't available, the advertising industry would often make one up. Like the word dependability. One of the giants of the advertising industry was one Theodore McManus. He lived from 1872 to 1940. McManus founded two famous advertising agencies, and his work revolutionized the automobile industry. Cars were his specialty, and he was lucky enough to live in an era

where the first automobiles were rolling off the lines. Over his career, he wrote ads for Cadillac, DeSoto, Chrysler, Pontiac, and Dodge. McManus believed in creating an image for automobile brands. While other advertisers boasted about the technical features of their cars, McManus wrote about the distinct feel of the brand and the kind of person who would be attracted to it. For example, he once wrote a print advertisement for Cadillac

with the headline, The Penalty of Leadership. While the ad contained a small Cadillac logo, the copy never once mentioned Cadillac by name. Instead, the ad talked about how leaders who dare to innovate are open to scorn, that a leader must stop listening to the chorus of naysayers, and, quote, when a man's work becomes the standard for the whole world, It was an interesting piece of writing. Cadillac had just stunned the world with an innovative V8 engine, and it was having some problems.

So McManus responded to the criticism with the Penalty of Leadership ad. It positioned Cadillac as a leader appreciated by leaders. The ad only ran once in the Saturday Evening Post, yet is considered one of the best advertisements of all time. Cadillac continued to reprint it for decades, and in the 1960s, Elvis Presley, an avid Cadillac fan, felt the ad spoke to him on a profound level, and had a copy of it framed on his wall. When Theodore McManus landed the Dodge account in 1914, he looked for inspiration in the letters Dodge owners had sent the automaker. One word kept coming up over and over again. Dependable.

Dodge owners loved the fact that cars rarely broke down, unlike the temperamental Ford Model Ts of the time. So McManus coined the word dependability. He called it a word that grew out of a fact. The word didn't exist in dictionaries, but McManus' copy said that any Dodge owner

could tell you exactly what it meant. McManus not only turned dependability into a word, he turned it into a noun, a thing. He made it a definable quality of Dodge automobiles.

It caught on so quickly, it was included in dictionaries by 1930. He made it a definable quality of Dodge automobiles. It caught on so quickly, it was included in dictionaries by 1930, defined as the quality of being able to be counted on. You can still see McManus' influence in the automobile sector today with the annual J.D. Power Dependability Study, which ranks every car brand based on reliability. That, and the fact you can hear the word dependability in almost every second car or truck commercial. Theodore McManus revolutionized automobile advertising

and surprisingly, never learned to drive in his lifetime. The advertising industry created another word for a different category, namely, the beer industry. Beginning in the 1960s, the fine print on Budweiser labels said, in part, that Budweiser had a drinkability you will find in no other beer

at any price. The word drinkability was coined by the beer company. It wasn't a word people used, and it wasn't found in any dictionaries. While the word drinkable existed, the coined word drinkability did for beer what dependability did for automobiles. It became a noun. And nouns could morph into features that products could own. Drinkability suggested Budweiser had a smoothness that made it pleasurable to drink more than one,

a key marketing strategy that promotes beer consumption. In other words, drinkability became a product quality people were willing to pay for. In 2008, Bud Light was under pressure from rival light beers Miller and Coors. So the brand launched a campaign based entirely on Drinkability as its point of difference. That's good. Drinkability, my friend. Drinkability means Bud Light won't fill you up. It's got plenty of room for your favorite festival cuisine, you know, like funnel cakes, turkey legs.

My personal favorite, baba ganoush. Drinkability suggested Bud Light wasn't too heavy, a veiled reference to the slightly more bitter-tasting Miller Lite. And that it wasn't too light, a knock against a slightly more watery Coors Light. Alcohol advertising is highly regulated, and the few words marketers are allowed to use to describe beer are put through the filters of laws, controls, and intense industry watchdogs. But the word drinkability was so subjective, so vague and unmeasurable, it was given a free pass. Think about how many times you've heard the word drinkability in beer advertising,

and you get an appreciation for how widespread this made-up word really is. Bud Light. The difference is drinkability. There are many reasons why marketers have coined words over the years. Think un-cola, a powerful word 7-Up used to position itself against cola giants Coke and Pepsi. David Ogilvie created the word Schweppervescence to distinguish the effervescent taste of Schweppes from other tonic waters. No other mixer has Schweppes' bittersweet flavor and rare effervescent taste of Schweppes from other tonic waters. No other mixer has Schweppes' bitter-sweet flavor and rare effervescence. Effervescence? You used to call those little bubbles Schweppervescence. Schweppervescence, of course.

Those remarkable little bubbles that last the whole drink through. When I was growing up, Surt's Breath Mints had a long-running series of TV commercials with a two-mints-in-one theme. New Surt's is two mints in one. Stops bad breath in seconds. Tastiest mint of all. Yes, only new Surt's gives you two, two, two mints in one. But along with two mints in one, Surt's hung its hat on this one word. What's more, Surt's contains a golden drop of RETZN,

the miracle breath purifier that makes your breath clean and fresh. But what is RETZN? It was an interesting marketing strategy from parent company American Chickle, whose other product was Chicklets. The company launched Sertz in 1956 and used the word Retsin in all its advertising for years. Retsin sounded vaguely scientific, and Sertz framed it as a proprietary ingredient, saying that a golden drop of Retsin was a miracle breath purifier.

In reality, Retsin was homogenized vegetable oil. But back in the 60s and 70s, many brands used a strategy of secret ingredients. It was a way to differentiate a product in the marketplace by creating mystery and allure. So critical when so many products are so similar. Secret ingredients suggested that science, not just marketing, made the product unique. Kentucky Fried Chicken had a secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices.

Colgate has something called Gardol. Crest had Floristan. Petro-Canada Gas has Taktrol. Oil of Olay has a micro-sculpting serum. You may laugh, but as I've mentioned before, Charles Darwin proved that even the smallest advantage

led to survival of the fittest. And in marketing, tiny advantages can often make a big noise. And we'll be right back. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. And we'll be right back. locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push, find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. If you're enjoying this episode, why not dip into our archives, available wherever you download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list. Sometimes, marketers commandeer obscure words and refashion them into marketing terms.

That's where halitosis came from. Even though Listerine had been marketed back in the late 1800s as a way to kill mouth germs, it didn't become a runaway success until it turned an obscure Latin term for bad breath into a vaguely sounding medical condition called halitosis. Once upon a time, Chuck Norris was the ultimate man. Chuck Norris was also furry. But years later, when the television show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy came along in 2003, it coined the term manscaping.

It was a new word for a new practice of male body grooming. Suddenly, hairless men were fashionable. Shaving brands were quick to jump on the manscaping bandwagon and began marketing shavers for men who wanted to groom their eyebrows, backs, shoulders, and, sometimes, their undercarriages. Today, manscaping is serious business. A recent Gillette study revealed that over 70% of men now shave or trim a part of their

body other than their faces. It's delicate work. Yes, it is. Speaking of commandeering a word or phrase, did you know that Colgate owns the trademark for the Tooth Fairy? It's true. Colgate owns those three words and uses them for dental hygiene education. If you go to Colgate's website, you'll find an entire section on the Tooth Fairy. As a side note, there is a Tooth Fairy Index that charts the annual amount of money the Tooth Fairy leaves under pillows. In 2014, the average was $5.75 per tooth, a 27% increase over 2013.

Total amount of cash found under North American pillows last year? $255 million. When Procter & Gamble developed a new kind of mop in 2001, the first word it wanted to ditch was mop. So it hired a branding company to come up with a better name. The company toyed around with the words clean and wipe. Then, playing off the fact this new mop made cleaning a quick chore, they mashed the words sweep and swift together, which created...

Switch to Swiffer Sweeper and you'll dump your old broom. Swiffer was a brand new word for a brand new mop that now generates over $1 billion per year. As we've mentioned in the past, the word jello was created from the words gelatin and jelly.

The letter O was added for two reasons. First, the letter O is appealing to the eye. And second, the odd spelling made J-E-L-L-O easier to trademark. While invented words are usually the result of creativity and research, at least one was the result of a flat-out mistake. When Bombardier launched its new two-person snowmobile in 1959,

it was called Ski-Doo. Get on Ski-Doo and go do it. But what you may not know is the snowmobile was originally called the Ski-Dog, a play on the term dog sled. Bombardier then printed up thousands of brochures to promote their new snowmobile, except nobody noticed the typo. The typo that changed ski dog into ski-doo. So Bombardier just went with it,

creating a new word that would not only brand their snowmobiles, it was so catchy it became a generic word for their snowmobiles, it was so catchy it became a generic word for all snowmobiles along the way. to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. BetMGM is an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League and has your back all season long. From puck drop to the final shot, you're always taken care of with the sportsbook Born in Vegas.

That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite skater, or your style, there's something every NHL fan is going to love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your hockey home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a celly and an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You've heard me talk many times about my favorite advertising of all time, the Volkswagen campaign of the 1960s. It was created by ad agency Doyle Dane Burnback, or DDB for short. The Jewish advertising agency and the German carmaker were odd bedfellows, but they had deep roots that went all the way back to 1959. Together, they had made the VW Beetle one of the most beloved cars of all time. Then, by 1990, VW sales were in trouble.

Japanese and American cars were taking sizable bites out of VW sales. Volkswagen's new director of marketing wanted to fire DDB, but out of respect for the relationship, he gave the agency 30 days to come up with a big campaign idea. On the pitch day, VW didn't hold out much hope for salvaging their relationship with DDB. Over the last six months, the carmaker had turned down every campaign

the agency had presented. That's when DDB surprised them by presenting the most unusual idea. It was a single word. Farfignogen. It was a campaign based around a German word that not even the German sitting around the table had ever heard before. Actually, it was a compound word made up of two separate German words.

Fahren, which means to drive, and Vernügen, which roughly translated to enjoyment. So, Farvignügen meant the joy of driving a Volkswagen. It was an interesting strategy for VW. One of the key reasons it became so successful in the late 50s was because DDB wisely chose to completely ignore

VW's post-World War II German heritage. But now, faced with an assault from Japanese and domestic cars, VW's German-ness was considered a unique selling point. So, Farven Nugent was launched. It starts the moment you start the car. An experience that's distinctly Volkswagen.

The quick acceleration, the sense of control, the car's surprising responsiveness as if it were simply an extension of you. There is a word for this driving experience. Farfignoogan. Farfignoogan. It's what makes a car a Volkswagen. In the beginning, Farfignoogan generated attention. The strangeness of the word caught the public's ear. The day after the launch,

the New York Times did a big story on Farvignugan. That night, Johnny Carson talked about it in his monologue. But while it seemed to catch fire initially, Farvignugan had no staying power. The general public never really understood what it meant, and sales continued to drop. Soon, Farvignugan spelled the end for DDB, and VW fired the ad agency that had made them famous. In the marketing world, maybe one of the most famous made-up words was for another automobile.

The year was 1975. The brand was Chrysler. The early 70s had been a difficult time for the car industry due to a recession and energy crisis. Sales were down dramatically, and Chrysler was no exception. So the carmaker launched a new model, the Chrysler Cordoba. It was an intermediate-sized luxury coupe.

The name Cordoba came from a town in Spain, and the car's logo was actually a stylized version of an Argentinian Cordoba coin. The name sounded vaguely Spanish and exotic. What the new car needed was an advertising campaign to announce its arrival. As fate would have it, Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban was performing the title role in a touring play about a Spanish lover named Don Juan. When the play hit Detroit,

Montalban caught the eye of Chrysler and his ad agency, Bazell Jacobs. Noting the actor's suave presence and his eloquent Spanish-sounding accent, Chrysler hired Ricardo Montalban to be the spokesperson for the Cordoba. That's when the world first heard a certain phrase. I know my own needs. And what I need from an automobile, I know I get from this new Cordoba.

I could ask for nothing beyond the quality of Cordoba's workmanship, the tastefulness of its appearance. I request nothing beyond the thickly cushioned luxury of seats available even in soft Corinthian leather. And there it was, Corinthian leather. It sounded so luxurious, so exclusive, so European. It was made in Jersey. Corinthian leather was a term completely made up by the copywriters at Bazell Jacobs.

But when it was uttered by Ricardo Montalban, his debonair and rolling R's made it sound magical, helping the Chrysler brand to more than double its sales in 1975. For virtually the entire run of the Cordoba, from 75 to 83, soft Corinthian leather was its most celebrated secret. Until the night David Letterman asked Ricardo Montalban about it on his talk show. What is the deal? What the hell is? Is there anything really Corinthian leather? Is that anything?

They found a leather that was very pliable, very soft, and very durable. And so Corinthian. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean. But does it mean anything? Nothing. Finally, the Corinthian cat was out of the bag.

Advertising has a voracious appetite. It eats up descriptive words at an alarming rate. As someone once said, advertising adjectives are like the blank tiles in Scrabble. You can use them anywhere, but they have no value. New, improved, refreshing, amazing, incredible, and revolutionary no longer have any impact in marketing. A wise ad man named James Webb Young once wrote, back in the 1940s, that

exaggeration in ads is due not to deceit, but a lack of skill in striking a true note. I agree with Mr. Young on that. Clichés are too easy. And, quite frankly, clichés make a lot of clients happy. And when they don't, marketers often create the words they need. The upside is that a coined word usually has no set definition. So it's an empty vessel that an advertiser can pour any benefit into. Like Retsin, Schweppervescence, and Corinthian leather. But no matter what the word is, the motivation is always the same,

to stand out in a crowded marketplace. And every once in a while, those made-up marketing words do more than just decorate an ad. Sometimes, they make a cannonading drive right into the dictionary when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly.

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