Lern how 2 spel
We often say in our “Mind the Gap” presentation, that there is nothing sadder than a bunch of Boomers trying to be cool. By this we mean that a lot of Boomers (in their 40s and 50s) in marketing/sales/advertising tend to think that because they were young once, they understand today’s young people, and are easily able to connect with them. I was reminded again this morning how simple mistakes can prove this belief to be false.
Standing in a bus at Cape Town airport, I noticed MTN’s campaign. Quite clever. “If ur coming, switch us on. If ur going, switch us off”. Except for the spelling mistake. They were trying to use the new SMS txt speak of the mobile phone generation. But they didn’t bother to do a spell check with a 13 year old. Anyone of whom could have told them that there is a difference between “ur” and “u r”. The former means “your” and the latter means “u r”. The space is critical.
Older generations tend to dismiss the free flowing world of text talk as having no grammar or rules. On the contrary, it has specific rules, and very careful etiquette. Pity the marketers at MTN didn’t lrn hw 2 spl. mayb nxt time?
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The guys I know in Joburg make a distinct difference between “your” – yr – and “you are” – “ur.” Whether there is a space or not in the “ur/u r” doesn’t really matter – it still means “you are.” Maybe MTN got it right after all :p
OK, I checked “SMS dictionary” in Google (trying to find the “dictionary” I saw that helped me distinguish UR from U R). Anyway, I found 4 of them, that had obviously all been copied from each other. Since the entries were as follows (EXACTLY):
UR – Y ou are
URT1 – Your the only one
I think its safe to safe to say that MTN were probably well within their rights to leave out the space. Its still a good ad, at least they tried.
Indeed. I think your point is still well taken – there is an increasing gap between the older and younger generations when it comes to media and communication. SMS is only one part of this: new media allows podcasting, blogging, MSN chatting on cellphones, Skype conversations and video conversations; even blogging from cellphones. And I guess this is only the start…