It maybe a development of the Eddie (Eddie Stobart) spotting fad of many years ago but I find reading the sides of trucks to be quite entertaining on a journey. Sad, I know. Some years ago most of the transport companies became logistics companies, I noticed. Presumably, delivery drivers metamorphosed into logistics operatives.
Now it seems that most of the trucks or vans I follow have become solutions. Everything is now a solution. a few weeks ago I was trying to figure out what a “vehicle solutions” company might be. It turned out to be a car rental company. Now that, I understand. Recently I noticed a van emblazoned with “LAMPS – Lighting And Mains Power Solutions”. An electrician, maybe? Who knows – I certainly don’t. I’m sure that there must be something out there that is a logistics solution.
It’s not just trucks, either. Whilst visiting my friendly optician I parked in a car park where a large wheelie bin declared itself as, “Shanks – waste solutions”. I always thought a waste solution was dirty washing up water.
In an idle moment I investigated a little and came up with this delightful piece of modern marketing mumbo-jumbo from Knorr:
Knorr Total Soup Solutions systems enable you to capitalise on the growing popularity of soup by making soups available, visible and attractive to consumers … together with complementary toppings to customise your soup.
Ye Gods! Now we’ve got a “total soup solution” dispensing customised soup! I don’t know that I want customised soup at all, and particularly not dehydrated customised soup.
Incidentally, I wondered if customised should be customized so I leapt into the dictionaries. I couldn’t find it, either in Chambers or in a thumping big Websters. Curious!
What really makes me want to throw up when reading advertising blurb is companies who are ‘….passionate…’ about their tedious products.
And talking about advertising that makes me want to throw up is there anything worse than that smug father and son in the Patek Phillippe watches ad ‘…you don’t own a Patek Phillippe, you just look after it for the next generation….’. Ugh, love to punch their self-satisfied mugs!
I always think that customised is the English version and customized the American but I’m sure I remember PGW telling me that customized is a very old English version?