Blame the nudge theory for your unbearably cute smoothie | Catherine Bennett
In the 15 years since a new brand of smoothies introduced the style of packaging that addresses consumers as if they were the product's ickle friends, the coming of the end of this cute, terminally patronising discourse, has continually been predicted. Even if Innocent can still get away with putting wee hand-knitted woolly hats on its refrigerated plastic bottles, for all the world as if it were run by dimwitted aunties as opposed to the Coca-Cola company, there are limits, learned advertisers have counselled, to the public's tolerance for transparently manipulative baby talk. Especially now that so many consumers now know this tactic has a name - wackaging - and may even have begun to recoil from, rather than salivate over, formerly inoffensive words including - trigger alert - yummy, fun, respect, pure, good, planet, stuff, daddy, value and "us".
For example: an over-familiarity that might work for fellow perpetrator Johnnie Boden, the sender of fun notey-woteys to the effect that one hasn't been in touch for simply ages - as well as flogger of one's personal details to random tat-purveyors - might not work, say, in the grittier context of road safety. The use of rhyming, though not scanning, ditties, as deployed by Transport for London, in intended mitigation of behavioural guidance, would surely not appeal to any organisation that respected its clients or wished to minimise homicidal ideation on the planet.
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