Once again, I am going to date myself as a child of the ‘80s. When I was a sophomore in high school, my English teacher, Mrs. Blum, was ready to boycott Toyota over their use of Ernest P. Worrell (of “Ernest Goes to Camp” fame) as a company spokesperson. While intended to poke fun at his clownish, good ol’ boy ways, his mispronunciation of epitome (“the epi-TOME of excellence”) totally unnerved her. She was concerned that young people watching television would follow in the footsteps of his mispronunciation. Even though I was in my prime “adults are clueless” years, I appreciated and never forgot her passionate take on the subject.
Fast forward to 2011 (I am now probably about the same age Mrs. Blum was back in my 10th grade classroom) and I am feeling the same kind of frustration. Last month, there was a mayoral election in North Bergen, NJ, a town near where I live. The winning (and incumbent!) mayor’s campaign slogan was, “I don’t know where you be from, but I be from North Bergen, son.” Seriously? I understand that some rules of grammar don’t apply in advertising. I can support ending a sentence with a preposition. Or even a one- or two-word sentence with no verb (like this one!). But, in my opinion, his campaign’s approach takes creative license way too far.
Just yesterday, I was driving out of Hoboken to take my son to the doctor in Wayne when I saw a billboard advertising a radio show. Its headline: “We be killin’ it.” Perhaps Mrs. Blum was right: We need to consider the impact these kinds of messages have on how children learn the language. As a marketing professional, I also think such butchering is potentially detrimental to the brands that allow it into their advertising.