What’s the best way to get someone’s attention and then keep it? An image, yes. But also a strap line.
Some years ago I was driving to work and passed three quite unrelated vehicles a few minutes apart from each other. Each one had a strap line on them. I had a better memory and a longer attention span in those days and idled away my journey by putting them together and coming up with the following:
“From inception to completion, our passion for perfection means that failure is not an option”.
The first four words – “From inception to completion” – came from a kitchen fitter’s van. A certain Leonardo Di Caprio movie about espionage in the world of dreams was big in those days and I wondered if the word inception was no coincidence. It was a big claim. I always think kitchen and bathroom fitters are artists in the manner of da Vinci rather than De Caprio and subscribe to the great renaissance man’s view that house jobs, like art, are never finished only abandoned. Usually because they can’t get the materials guv.
“Passion for perfection” looked like it was something to do with logistics. Now I get the perfection thing. Modern logistics is probably all about data fed algorithms churning out satnav style best options. Unless it has gone completely bad and wants to take you from London to Birmingham via Hartlepool, through a minefield and along a coastal path designed for donkeys, a satnav is nearly always right. Unless you are my niece who thinks that satnavs are shite and should be banned. I must ask her one day what happened to incur her wrath. But anyway I get the perfection but not the passion thing. In fact the words logistics and passion shouldn’t share the same space on the side of a van. It’s just wrong. I have a picture in my head of someone who works in logistics being passionate and it doesn’t compute. They would undress in a specific way and fold their clothes. They would draw up a schedule of sexual positions that optimised lovemaking time. Going straight from missionary to doggy would be frowned upon as wasteful and foreplay would have to be justified as enhancing outcomes and value in the sexual supply chain.
I apologise. As digressions go that was far too graphic. And I am sure that logistics people are wild in the bedroom, particularly after a week of algorithms and nitpicking. Must be a relief to just let it all hang out.
“Failure is not an option” was a bumper sticker on a 4×4 that turned out, when I overtook it, to be being driven by a very dull looking man on the verge of falling asleep at the wheel. If you end up in a ditch after nodding off and have to be pulled out, I thought, that slogan could be an embarrassment widely circulated on social media. But failure is not an option is a bit crass for the simple reason that life and the fates frequently remind us that not only is it one but it is probably the most likely one. Particularly in post Brexit Britain.
Anyway putting them all back together again: you end up with “From inception to completion, our passion for perfection means that failure is not an option” which to my mind shows that straplines (like Tory cabinet ministers) do best when they go around in mutually defensive groups but are still complete nonsense.
I quite like it as bullshit goes. There’s some catchy alliteration, a sense of fulfilment and a punchy finale. The problem is these things are rarely true. I mean, when did anyone have an honest strapline on the side of their van like “we’re crap but at least we’re cheap” or “we provide meaningless stuff to people with more money than sense”. So it’s all nonsense anyway. But I did see a very funny cartoon recently which I think wins a prize for honesty and humour. It showed a geeky looking professor at the wheel of a sleek looking van on the side of which was written: Freelance Quantum Physicist – No Job Too Small
Eyecatching 