pejoration of "stuff?"

[Leslie Savan]

> Maybe unadorned stuff is pejorating, but it hasn't gone too far yet.
> Snapple is still, we are told, "made from the best stuff on earth".

I agree: Most stuff is still good stuff, especially in advertising and
marketing. I wrote a column, "Stuff Love," in the Village Voice years ago,
and referred to it in Slam Dunks and No-Brainers:

The lay-consumer word for product is stuff....Ten years ago, over just a few
months' time, I counted some seventeen ads that turned on the word stuff,
from the Snapple slogan, "Made from the best stuff on earth," to the
"anthem" TV spot of a $100 million Microsoft campaign. (Over a montage of
"diverse" human faces, a druggy-sounding female voiceover oozed, "The stuff
that we make...the stuff that we make, make trouble and good things will
happen...stuff that we make is powerful.") Today, we're still unable to talk
or think or put out a men's magazine (namely Stuff) without tufts of stuff
love. Recently [i.e., '05/'06], Verizon helped sell itself with a line that
could be mistaken for Microsoft's: "This is really powerful stuff"; a TV
spot for Gold Bond medicated powder claimed, "This stuff really works";
while a package of Hostess cupcakes beckoned, "Hostess: Now that's the
stuff."

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