Down with Awful Copywriting – Example 2

Cars. They are so much more than just a biggish, expensive device to get you from A to B. And competition is fierce. So naturally manufacturers pour a lot of money into outdoing each other with creative ads.

All this effort goes down the drain by the time the ads make it to Israel, and the local importer/distributor asks his advertising agency to make a Hebrew version of the ad.
More often than not, the agency apparently decides that the ad created for Europe or North America simply won't work in Israel, and opts for a made-for-the-average-Israeli-macho version.

The results range from acceptable to lame to downright awful.

Example? With [dis]pleasure.

Go to the Volvo XC90 page and click on the link 5 Things to Know.

That's just plain good marketing writing; nothing extravagant. Tells you good things about the car. That's for the sake of background information.

Then Google "Volvo XC90 ads" and look at a few. The artwork is beautiful and the slogan is simple: Life is Lived Better Together.

Or if you want the humorous version, try this.

Now, if you have a Hebrew daily handy, look at the ad that's been running in Hebrew papers for weeks. The Hebrew text is low-brow, crass and coarse, which is bad enough. The English translation is … I can't think of a suitable adjective: Unprofessional. Literal. Yuck. Blargh. It doesn't even capture the spirit of the Hebrew. (I don't know if that's good or bad, in this case!) See below: (The text of the ad is all upper case; not my doing.)

YOU HIT THE ACCELERATOR AND DON'T BELIEVE IT, 3.2 LITERS MOBILIZE TO PROVIDE YOU WITH 238 HORSEPOWER. YOU LOOK BEHIND YOU AND DON'T BELIEVE IT, THERE ARE SEVEN SEATS. YOU GET INTO THE CAR, AND YOU DON'T BELIEVE THE AMOUNT OF PAMPERING FEATURES [SIC!]. YOU READ ABOUT THIS OFFER AND YOU REALIZE THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY WHICH WON'T REPEAT ITSELF.

Sadly, this "opportunity" has been repeating itself for weeks.