Even if you don’t speak German, you’ll understand what they’re saying at the 16-second mark:
This ad is on German television and is intended to sell over-packaged low-cal products. You can also find it in print.
Of all the horrible advertising I’ve seen in my nearly 15 years of being bombarded by visual crap in this country, this slogan has to be down there with the worst.
The following is what a German website has to say about it. The politically correct will now be excused.
We really don’t know what they’re trying to say with this adolescent-level slogan, beside which we ask ourselves how this is supposed to work. You can literally translate “Fuck the diet” as “Shit on the diet” in German. Why this company has sunk to using such ghetto talk is beyond us, but let’s have some fun with it.
How do you fuck a diet? Is it code for, “Have sex with fat people, they’ll thank you for it?” Or should you just have some Cola Light before having sex? What about using sweeteners instead of Viagra? It’s worth an experiment.
Well now.
If they really wanted to use such an offensive slogan as part of their ad campaign, at least they could have dropped the wannabe English coolness and used something equivalent in German. But maybe that might have woken up what passes for an Advertising Standards Council, and it wouldn’t have been approved.
The banner photograph shows the town of Britannia Beach, BC, Canada, where I grew up. It's home. But I don't live there anymore.
Wow.. I don’t even know what to say.
Surprised I’ve not seen this come up in any of the German newspapers I still follow – I would have thought this to have made more of an impact.
I must admit I was surprised to see this ad on my TV the other day. Obviously they have much more relaxed censorship board than we do in Australia.
I know that more and more people on German evening talk shows and game shows are dropping F bombs right and left. On a recent showing of the Elton vs Simon game show the must have said fuck about fifty times and that’s not an exaggeration. The more you here it in those places the more people think it’s hip and, even worse, acceptable. Look, I say fuck a lot but I was pretty shocked to hear it on a commercial where little kids can hear it and believe it’s acceptable to use anywhere. Few things are more cringe worthy than hearing a 4 year old say fuck.
I don’t understand German but what I got from that was be young hip, active, cute, skinny, sexy, cute boyfriends eat eat eat and I suppose buy their product to accomplish all this. Same stuff we see here in America. It should serve as a warning. Certainly geared towards the teens, 20-somethings…the more gullible of the human race.
BTW, OT but your searches that coughed up your blog are hilarious! OMG, too funny. I get you via email so never saw this before.
Wow. That’s really distasteful to me, personally.
But why isn’t it objectionable enough to its target audience to self-eliminate? Saturation?
And would I be labeled puritanical for my disgust by the local natives whom I catch using epithets of the same calibre? Sadly, I think it likely.
Seems Germans aren’t alone in their misuse of the f-bomb in advertising: http://tinyurl.com/7wz2nf3
Although I’ll admit to having *thought* these words while devouring a second Currywurst, I find it unbelievable that a company would put this in print — and even worse, use it to promote their products. Still … it’s a brilliant marketing ploy: They’ve certainly gotten us talking about it! Thank you for yet another fascinating lesson in our cultural differences.
Thanks for sharing this – it cracked me up! I reposted it to my blog. German usage of “fuck” is a favorite topic among my local expat friends – a nicely stilted “un-fucking-fassbar” is a staple in our vocabularies after hearing it over and over on some German ad.
Thanks for sharing – this cracked me up! German usage of “fuck” is a favorite topic among my local expat friends. (That stilted “un-fucking-fassbar” we all heard over and over on some show ad for months still doesn’t fail to amuse!)
Side note – wordpress has started forcing me to comment under my wordpress account, which I don’t actually use! Anyone know a way around that?
The link that Harvey Morrell drops to the sale in Japan reminds me of one I saw a couple of years ago: Merry Fucking Christmas sale! I took a photo of it at the time, meant to post, forgot…
There are so many examples of this out there. Is it just a fad?
Really – I just don’t know what to say. I’ll admit I find a good bit of hypocrisy about language in the US, where we’ve produced this strange amalgam of puritanical horror and obsessive voyeurism that leads to things like “the F-word” and “the N-word”.
In some ways, I’d rather people use the unexpurgated version if they’re going to use the word. But I’d rather they didn’t use it. And I surely wouldn’t want it appearing in advertising. Pretty interesting stuff.
You make an excellent point, Linda. As awful as this ad is, at least it’s not fig-leafed with some sort of bleep-out. You just have to roll your eyes every time you hear a shrill tone in place of the swear word you know is there – or the flap that results if one leaks onto the airwaves.
I’m often surprised at some of the songs they play here on the radio, etc. In Germany you can say it on the radio, or sing it. With this ad spot they were probably just going one step further, not realizing they were stepping off a cliff.