Executively Posted Addendum

A single sentence might destroy The Driver. It's so bad, he can't even clearly articulate its shortcomings. Of course, it was early in the morning, and The Driver hadn't had his Dr Pepper.

In the previous post, The Driver makes the shocking accusation that a radio spot for the new 4-door Porsche Panamera lists "a second row of... passengers" as standard equipment.

Upon reading the sentence no fewer than 17 more times, The Driver concedes that the radio spot is not technically incorrect.

Here's the sentence again:

And with the addition of a second row of executively seated passengers, there's no end to the rules you can break.

While the passengers are still described as being seated "executively," the sentence does not claim that Porsche added them to the vehicle. Instead, the listener is meant to infer that he or she should add a second row of passengers, make sure that they are seated executively, and then go out and break some rules.

The spot further suggests that the Porsche Panamera enables the user to break rules -- especially with the addition of a second row of executively seated passengers. It is not clear whether the word "rules" refers to the traffic laws in the customer's particular jurisdiction -- or whether the consumer and his passengers are simply supposed to drive around in a Panamera and challenge established social norms. While seated executively.

The Driver really should be focusing on paying work right now. But this stupid Porsche ad has him hot under the advertising collar. Here's why:

1. When the suits win, the brand loses. No copywriter in his right mind would ever choose the word "executively" to describe seats, passengers or an effing set of golf clubs. It's barely a word. It's clumsy. And it's merely some product manager's idea of saying something classy. This abomination of a sentence in an otherwise Porsche-quality radio spot was written by a suit -- and when a copywriter tried to edit it back into English, the suit held a gun to the copywriter's head and threatened to make him/her write table tents at Chili's for the rest of his/her career. When suits start writing the brand copy, the brand loses touch with its audience. And even if that audience may, in fact, be comprised entirely of suits (and prefer to sit executively as opposed to traditionally), they still don't appreciate being patronized.

2. Jargon wins. And don't get The Driver started on jargon. He has given lectures on avoiding jargon. He has dedicated a good portion of his life to eliminating jargon from marketing. And if he gets started on jargon for the sake of a silly blog post, he's going to blow a deadline. Jargon always ruins everything. Always. Everything. Period.