Now they've gone too far...
Apr. 29th, 2004 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eregyrn...all the way over into Arrant Stupidity. I'm talking about marketing wonks, both in general and those who work for the Gap in particular.
Yesterday, I bought some new pants at the Gap. Sort of striped, cotton, slightly-stretchy bootcut trousers, to be precise (plus, they were on sale). That's fine. What's got me scratching my head is the fact that on their website, the Gap describes the color of these pants as "vicuna". (Apparently they don't want to confuse the issue by the inclusion of the tilda.)
So I'm looking at these things on-screen, and I'm thinking, "Well, I personally would call that 'taupe', but, whatever..." Because god knows, by this point I am used to marketing wonks and their incontrollable urge to find newer and fancier terms for basic colors. Spend a couple of seasons shopping with J.Jill and learning to tell the difference between "aubergine" and "mulberry", or "sunset" and "tangerine" (because "salmon" is now too pedestrian a term, I suppose), and you come to take it for granted then when you shop for womens' clothes, you're going to have to decode some weird color terms.
But -- I'm getting to the head-scratching part -- when I go to an actual store and find the pants, they're...green. Kind of an olive-y, sage-y green, but, you know, unmistakeably verdant. Not tan. Not taupe. And it's not just me. The girl behind the counter who has to call another store to see if they have my size in stock calls them "the green striped pants", and the girl at the store at which I pick them up calls them "the green striped pants".
And the thing is -- by no stretch of the imagination are VICUÑA green.
So, check me on this: now not only do the marketing wonks look pretentious by trying to come up with exotic terms for colors, but, they can look stupid as well by, clearly, misunderstanding the meaning and association of the exotic word they've chosen to represent a color. Brilliant.
Either that, or marketing has just reached a brave new frontier in which they have all decided that the exotic words they choose to represent colors no longer actually have to relate to the color! "Vicuna" sounds...well, I don't know what THEY think it sounds like, exotic and sophisticated and adventurous or something (because, c'mon people, it's a SKINNY MEMBER OF THE CAMELID FAMILY)...but I guess they think it sounds like something that women who buy at the Gap would want to associate with their clothes. And that's ever so much more valuable than, you know, that old-fashioned idea of actually conveying any information about the product.
Still, I like the pants.
(In deference to people who have Friended me recently, I make a solemn vow to try to remember to use the lj-cut thing more often. Because I do tend to go on, when I infrequently post.)
Yesterday, I bought some new pants at the Gap. Sort of striped, cotton, slightly-stretchy bootcut trousers, to be precise (plus, they were on sale). That's fine. What's got me scratching my head is the fact that on their website, the Gap describes the color of these pants as "vicuna". (Apparently they don't want to confuse the issue by the inclusion of the tilda.)
So I'm looking at these things on-screen, and I'm thinking, "Well, I personally would call that 'taupe', but, whatever..." Because god knows, by this point I am used to marketing wonks and their incontrollable urge to find newer and fancier terms for basic colors. Spend a couple of seasons shopping with J.Jill and learning to tell the difference between "aubergine" and "mulberry", or "sunset" and "tangerine" (because "salmon" is now too pedestrian a term, I suppose), and you come to take it for granted then when you shop for womens' clothes, you're going to have to decode some weird color terms.
But -- I'm getting to the head-scratching part -- when I go to an actual store and find the pants, they're...green. Kind of an olive-y, sage-y green, but, you know, unmistakeably verdant. Not tan. Not taupe. And it's not just me. The girl behind the counter who has to call another store to see if they have my size in stock calls them "the green striped pants", and the girl at the store at which I pick them up calls them "the green striped pants".
And the thing is -- by no stretch of the imagination are VICUÑA green.
So, check me on this: now not only do the marketing wonks look pretentious by trying to come up with exotic terms for colors, but, they can look stupid as well by, clearly, misunderstanding the meaning and association of the exotic word they've chosen to represent a color. Brilliant.
Either that, or marketing has just reached a brave new frontier in which they have all decided that the exotic words they choose to represent colors no longer actually have to relate to the color! "Vicuna" sounds...well, I don't know what THEY think it sounds like, exotic and sophisticated and adventurous or something (because, c'mon people, it's a SKINNY MEMBER OF THE CAMELID FAMILY)...but I guess they think it sounds like something that women who buy at the Gap would want to associate with their clothes. And that's ever so much more valuable than, you know, that old-fashioned idea of actually conveying any information about the product.
Still, I like the pants.
(In deference to people who have Friended me recently, I make a solemn vow to try to remember to use the lj-cut thing more often. Because I do tend to go on, when I infrequently post.)
