The perils of bad punning

Truly successful PR campaigns are marked by one thing: a smart, sassy slogan that succinctly captures all that’s great about the ‘product’. It’s gotta be punchy, pithy, perfectly pitched: think ‘Kill your speed, not a child’ (Road Safety), ‘Go to work on an egg’ (Egg Marketing Board) or ‘It is. Are you’ (The Independent). The trouble is of course that many worthy products - many bold and brave strategies - are undermined by an ill-conceived ad campaign. And more often than not, by a teeth-grindingly poor pun. Does anything leap to mind? Shall I make it leap a little higher?

How about ‘Building visions’ (the CIC video), ‘Constructing Excellence’, ‘Building best practice’ (CIRIA), ‘Constructing better health’, hell, even the CIOB’s own ‘Change in our sites’. Industry initiatives of recent years have been plagued by a succession of trite, dreadfully lazy slogans, which make the important messages they promote sound far less interesting than they actually are. The letters pages of CM are often hijacked by CIOB members complaining that construction fails to attract bright, able graduates. Could it be such people take one look at the PR material - one look at the wafer-thin wit behind blunders like ‘Ivor Goodsite’ (the Considerate Constructors’ mascot) - and groan? This is a forward-thinking industry, full of dynamic opportunities for dynamic people. Let’s not put them off with slogans that scream: “We just couldn’t be bothered.”