make what happen?

I have an entire rant about the Heathrow Express, inspired by the marvellous Splintering Urbanism and the contrasting experience (and cost) of the equivalent train from Amsterdam Schipol into Amsterdam, which I can't be bothered to roll out right now. Suffice to say that you can find out everything you need to know about British political economy from the connections between London and its airports. But I'd never noticed the train's particular advertising slogan before today:

 

This is certainly an improvement on the slogans of other public sector organisations, with their dreary present participles and appeals to motion ('Making Islington cleaner', 'towards a better NHS' etc), although it does also sound worryingly like the title of an Oasis album. But more importantly: make what happen? Perform a leveraged buy-out of ABN Amro in summer 2007? Oversee the largest bankruptcy in British corporate history then walk off with a £600k pension? Make what happen? If the Directors of RBS are quite so intent on keeping quiet, perhaps they could extend this to their branding agents too. And in case you're wondering what the point of this post is, there isn't one. But Heathrow Express + RBS + advertising twaddle = irritation.

Comments

[Ian C]

Quite so.
This is standard-issue neoliberal era advertising-twaddle, of course. (I give you the neologism Twadvertising - it saves time.) It is meant to convey an all-purpose sense of dynamism, no-nonsense businesslike go-getting and accomplishment. All the more ironic that it is attached in this instance to RBS, revealed by now as one of the worst-run corporations of the past 30 years.
But this is not the winner of the Palme de Merde for worst example of current twadvertising. Step forward Sky, with the ludicrous slogan 'Believe in Better'.

[Will Davies]

When I was an undergraduate, one of the Saatchis (not Nigella's current one) once came to my Cambridge college to give a dreary talk about advertising. He said slogans were like the shipping forecast, and the more words, the worse they were. Three words is reasonably OK, though one or two is ideal. Most, like 'every little helps' and 'I'm lovin It', seem to be three.

Saatchi only won any real sympathy when a nasty rightwing historian called John Adamson set about trying to entertain the crowd by asking the (Jewish) speaker "you mean like 'Arbeit Macht Frei'?!"

[Ian C]

Much better than real advertising, if that is the adjective I want, is fictional life on Madison Avenue. There is now a new volume from Blackwell called Mad Men and Philosophy, explaining philosophy through the stories of Don Draper and co. The perfect Christmas gift for Potlatch readers, I reckon.