Pay No Attention to that Artisan Behind the Curtain

There are a lot of reasons why people find marketing speak annoying. Stiff, silly terms like “incentivize” and “synergy” can make a mockery of simple, substantive information.

 The marketing terms that annoy me the most are empty descriptors, and there’s no better example than “artisan.” In the last decade or so, this noun and its adjective form “artisinal” have become the words of choice to describe everything from bread to glass to mutual funds.

 Traditionally, as the L.A. Times noted in a recent article, the term has referred to “a meticulously handcrafted product, made in small batches.” No more. Just when you thought marketers had milked this word to the max, Domino’s has introduced a line of artisan pizzas. Domino’s. As in NYSE-traded multinational with 9,000 stores in 60 countries.

 Like every other company that uses this word, Domino’s would rather you not question what it means and instead swallow whole an image --a feeling it conveys: old-world bakers and cheesemakers with salt-and-pepper handlebar mustaches and adorable accents plying their craft amid the spirited strains of accordion music. Good marketing, indeed. But in Domino’s case, a more accurate image might be a pimply-faced teenager who no longer spits in the sauce because he grew bored with that his first month on the job.

 Domino’s isn’t stretching the truth, though. One definition of “artisan” is “a worker who practices a trade or handicraft.” So, sure, the word can describe a member of Domino’s 145,000 -strong workforce.

 “Applewood-smoked bacon” is another term that bothers me. It emphasizes the flavor and aroma of apples through a ridiculously flimsy association: The smoke came from wood that came from trees that, presumably, produce apples. Could anyone really taste the difference between applewood-smoked bacon and, say, cherry wood-smoked bacon?

 No doubt, some companies that use the term “applewood-smoked bacon” don’t even afford it that much meaning. They’re just operating on the premise that the more descriptors you can tack on the front of a noun, the fancier it sounds.

 To me, any word used to convey image at the expense of meaning -- telling us to shut off our brains and open our wallets -- is just annoying.

 

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2011 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.