Dam advertising Dunglish
Someone told me recently that this advert has been around for a while, but that’s not important. What is important, is that it was spotted in New York City by a Dutch friend of mine now living in Québec who couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw this and forwarded it to me. He assured me that he asked New Yorkers what they thought and most of them didn’t get it because of the Dunglish. This is a clear cut example of Dutch marketing folks having fun thinking they are clever and irritating everyone else but themselves and their client. Tip to you Einsteins, get with the programme and read Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. Today!
The red to emphasise Dam looks like a rip off of the I Amsterdam slogan, which, if you follow this link, was also poorly ripped off by Madrid. Second, the whole Hallo! And welcome schtick is bad punctuation and copywriting unless it was aimed at a Dutch audience who could get all warm and fuzzy being abroad and all, but it wasn’t, killing the effect like a flat glass of Amstel. Third, why on Earth did they use the Dutch word for beer (bier) instead of the English one? Talk about getting a headache from a cheap buzz! Crafting beer? Are you on drugs too? The ‘Gauw tot ziens’ (a quick and dirty translation of ‘See you soon’) doesn’t work if you cannnot read it, which is probably like 95% of people. It might as well be written in hieroglyphs.
Tags: beer, New York City
