I was on a walk yesterday, and I noticed a sandwich board out the front of a beauty shop. As well as the usual details, it included some text to the side as if to attract attention. The text was:

50% off new clients

If you are very overweight, you may be happy to know they could remove 50% of you (I wonder if you get to choose where the 50% comes from?) If you aren’t overweight enough to want to loose 50%, we can only hope they don’t remove other parts of you!

Of course, what they really meant was new clients pay half price on their usual services – but it is important to write what you mean rather than assume people can understand you.

How could it have been better?

50% off for new clients {yes, adding one word makes all the difference!}

OR

half price for your first visit {longer, but very clear and also shows the discount is for only one visit}

Have you read your marketing messages to be sure they say what you mean them to?

Tags: mean, message, special, write

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 at 10:36 am and is filed under bad writing examples, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.