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The Case for Vulgarity in Marketing Communications
If cursing is part of who you are, don’t dial it down to please customers
When you think about top brands and the way in which they communicate with their customers, you probably don’t imagine a lot of cursing. Marketing communications tend to strive for a level of professionalism that doesn’t include or condone vulgarity. In order to maintain a standard of family-friendliness and widespread market appeal, brands believe they have to use pristine language.
One argument for the maintenance of this status quo is simply that curse words don’t add meaning and, particularly in an age of decreasing attention spans, good communicators use the fewest words necessary to get their message across. But that’s so fucking boring I could die.
I love a good curse word. I love them all, in fact, and I’m an advocate for breaking down and eventually demolishing the stigmas that surround them.
They’re helpful. They’re useful. They’re expressive and dynamic, injecting sentences with emotion and feeling that you just can’t get otherwise. Above all, they’re words we’re all familiar with and use on a daily basis, so why shouldn’t brands that want to connect with us use them?
