Dear Reader,

I’m sorry if the title of this post seems too ambitious and you are expecting a complete treatise on how to invent new words to foster your marketing campaign! Instead, you will find some simple reasoning that I made in reply to a friend of mine, let’s call him P., about my inventions of neologisms in posts Inventions and Neologisms and, previously, Word of the day – July, 16th 2017

Some year ago I was complaining with P. about an invention in an Italian advertisement for a brand of chocolate. The firm was saying “Let yourself be charmed by the scioglievolezza of (brand name)”. Scioglievolezza is an invented word that, in English, will sound more or less as “meltiness” fused with “sweetness” (meltsweetness?), giving the idea that the chocolate will pleasantly melt in your mouth. Yum!

My dear friend P. was confused and questioned me for clarifications: “How can you criticise the ad, and yet go on inventing words?”.

Well, the question is legitimate and requires a thoughtful reply.

I will explain myself starting with this fundamental assumption: an ad is like a promise. When you tell me what your product will deliver, I expect it to deliver as for specifications. Yes, I may be a demanding buyer, but I look for fairness in every transaction: “money for a service/product” should mean “a specified amount of money for a specific service/product”.

So, what is wrong with the ad?

I watched it again: it says only that it was “conceived by maître chocolatier” and that it is “enclosed in a shell of extra fine chocolate”. So, nothing more than what you would normally expect is said about the quality of the product, neither the available types of chocolate are listed nor shown. In the end, the narrating voice says “…will fill your heart with its scioglievolezza.“.

Can you feel my disappointment? Nothing original neither specific is told, and the added value of the product is described via a word that, although intelligible, has no defined meaning (so you couldn’t even complain about not having felt its scioglievolezza!).

On the other hand, if you take your time to establish the meaning of a word beforehand, there is nothing wrong per se in creating a new word. And there is nothing wrong about creating new words in fiction, like “grok” (Robert A. Heinlein, “Stranger in a Strange Land”), “quark” (James Joyce, “Finnegans Wake”) and the likes, wither directly created or derived from characters and titles. Good artists are notorious for being on the edge of human feeling, where new concepts are just about to crystalise from the global subconscious to reach the global awareness. Cyberspace, web surfing, factoid, meme (from back to 1976!, thank you Mr Dawkins!) are all neologisms that came at the right time and stuck in our minds.

More importantly, it is allowed and always advised, trying to construct a proper narrative around the product you are selling. Viewed from this perspective the commercial is not bad since it ties together comforting concepts: take a moment for yourself… mastery and tradition brought you this chocolate… whenever you want… fill your heart of smoothmeltin’sweetness-thingy.

Am I ranting too much? Maybe, but since I’m becoming more careful when I buy a product and more sensible to marketing matters, the comment of P. somehow stuck and forced me to think and reconsider (that’s what good friends are for!). I’m planning to create a series of posts named “Marketing Failures” to highlight what I’m learning on the subject of marketing in a humorous style: stay tuned!

Until next time, shmelt your shmeltin’sweet’n’sugaryness!

P.s.: for those who are curious, here is the TV ad: https://youtu.be/alnBUCgr3FA