Laziness is the new copywriting trick

Random musing of the day: Is the contruction "[x] is the new [y]" still fair game in advertising, or is it completely, ridiculously, mind-numbingly overused already?

It probably started, way back when, with "gray is the new black," or maybe "40 is the new 30." But somewhere along the way it became an all-purpose lazy-writing standard, as evidenced here, in a fun post on the Agoraphilia blog from earlier this year.

Now, marketing materials for the film Ocean's Twelve are going with the tagline: "Twelve is the new eleven." Which really is pretty meaningless when you think about it.

If you're going to go the meaninglessness route, why not have some fun? Maybe channel Spinal Tap with a line like, "This one goes to twelve."

—Posted by Tim Nudd

November 29, 2004 | Permalink