ZERO TO IT SWAG THROUGH IT

The sort of crude, grating, grammatically petulant, meaning-deficient, two fingers up to the English language, millennials! engage with me! line that should have any copywriter worth the buttons on their keyboard reaching for Twitter and scribbling out creative ways to say:

Lucozade, mate, what are you on about?

(Cue predictably bloggy twist.)

I like it.

I think it’s good writing. Or good-bad. Or bad-good. Not so bad it’s good, just both at the same time. Bad according to the rules of real writing. Good because it fits with the campaign.

If you’ve seen the campaign, you’ll know it’s loud. Brash. Neon. Garish. It looks like Lucozade tastes.

So in the midst of all these shrieking, sugar-high graphics, it’s not just any old nonsense. It’s good nonsense. Considered nonsense. Nonsense that throbs with all the fizzy-bellied energy of the drink it’s there to promote.

Nonsense that’s interesting because it doesn’t behave by normal semiotic standards. The form of the writing is more important than the meaning. It’s a carrier pigeon that peacocks over its message. Tone of voice taken to a lurid extreme.

And, crucially, it’s consistent. Consistently attention-seeking. Consistently a bit annoying.

Which is good, because this is Lucozade. The world has moved on. When it wants a boost, it juices a juice or fixes a coffee. Lucozade is lagging behind, forgotten somewhere in an abandoned vending machine on an abandoned train platform, reminiscing with Revels about a time when they were fun, and cool, and young people found them attractive.

So if Lucozade wants to be loud, and brash, and break a few rules to win back some attention, that’s fine by me.