Ordering By Description

Ordering By Description
-OR-
Making Up Words for Marketing


Making up pseudo-words for marketing is something that companies have been doing to induce us to make us buy their products for some times. It's something that I've been exposed to my whole life and it seems relatively normal to me if very hokey when we have cereal like Count Chocula. Count Chocula or Booberry do not appeal to me to make me want to buy them but I suspect that this helps them advertise to children who, while having no money of their own, have six times the ability of any kind of advertisements to convince people that they do know who have money to buy them things through a process known only as "whining". Advertising hokey things to children who are impressed by it and selling things through their whining is a generally-accepted way of selling things.

Making up entire languages, however simplistic, is something somewhat newer for advertisers. Making up a whole new language is the next level of the made-up words scheme. Except, this level was not intended for children. Children can remember Booberry because their little simian brains think that kind of thing is worth a giggle or two but they have a pretty hard time grasping the english language never mind some kind of hacked-together romance-based stilted- okay so I realize here that I've just started to describe the english language itself but I guess that's just because advertisers are not very imaginative about that sort of thing and my original point is that children have a hard enough enough time with their first language never mind a second one even though they are essentially the same.

The reason a whole invented language is appealing is because it conveys a sense of eliteness to those who comprehend it. This method worked out especially for advertisers of widely-consumed products generally intended for adults. Obviously adults are a little more suave and like to think that they know how advertisement works and yet the advertisers still manage to get them. Because if you can walk into a store and navigate their menu created in an absurd invented language and come out with something that you actually want to drink you are superior to everyone who cannot do the same.

My first experience with this was my freshman year in highschool when we went on a school trip to see a play and ended up going to a mall to sort of hang out after it was over. My friends decided that some caffeinated beverages would be good so we went to Starbucks and my friends said totally incomprehensible things to the cashiers and received presumably corresponding things in return. I did the only thing that I could and said that I would have the same as one of my friends had gotten and ended up with some kind of hot coffee beverage that I could not now even attempt to tell you what it was or tasted like or even looked like. This marked the beginning of my serious aversion to establishments like this.

I then routinely avoided getting anything at any place that required me to speak in a language created solely to sell me things by the kind of people who thought that getting a degree in marketing so they could create advertisements was a good idea. The problem with this total avoidance was that it made it difficult to get a cup of coffee in certain places. Coffee in gas stations, restaurants, coffee places, cafes and at home are all very different things. Some are good. Some are totally unpalatable. And I finally ended up ordering something somewhere and in my annoyance I decided I didn't care if I did it wrong I just wanted some coffee so I ordered: "Whatever ridiculous holiday flavor you have right now in whatever passes as medium." And I got a delicious medium-sized beverage full of caffeine.

It was very liberating to realize that the made-up marketing language didn't matter because the cashier and I both spoke english. I can go to Dairy Queen and get a so called "moolatta" by saying: "I would like your absurdly-named coffee and chocolate beverage in whatever passes as small." And in return I got a delicious beverage that was like mocha pudding through a straw. That made-up marketing language? That's all it is. It sells the way other marketing schemes sell products. So I encourage you. Order yourself a delicious foamy chocolaty coffee beverage with whipped cream and caramel on top.