Nobody Does It Like Sara Lee?

[Roger Shuy]

on 4/19/05 12:01 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky at zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Nobody Does It Like Sara Lee?
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> On Apr 19, 2005, at 10:39 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>>
>> Speaking of negative concord in TV commercials, I recall that Burger
>> King
>> had a mid-'90s ad campaign for the Whopper using Marvin Gaye's song
>> "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing."  That struck me as an unfortunate
>> choice,
>> since people might provide the interpretation "It ain't nothing like
>> the
>> real thing" rather than "There ain't nothing like the real thing."
>
> i think you're underestimating people's ability to get the intended
> message in this case.  and there's a widely-known model in "Ain't
> nobody here but us chickens."
>
>> A more recent example of unfortunate burger-chain sloganeering is "You
>> gotta eat!" for Checker's/Rally's.  As King Kaufman wrote on Salon.com,
>> this could be interpreted as: "(What the Heck), Ya Gotta Eat! (or
>> you'll
>> starve, and eating our burgers is marginally better than starvation)."
>
> now, this one strikes me as not so effective.
>
> arnold
>
--but probably accurate neverthe less. Truth in advertising???

roger