That slogan catches your attention, doesn’t it? This phenomenon is called wordplay (or pun if you like). Generally speaking it is another form of attracting consumer’s attention by its effect on playing with different levels of language, i.e. phonological, morphological, lexical,syntactic, graphological and textual. Wordplays are frequently used in commercial advertising as a rhetorical device to promote products or services.

Normally they create humor by relating to other well-known situation or object.They also often reflect the cultural preferences and traditions of the country, which is seen as identifying ad with the consumers. For example, car producing company advertises its product ‘the Beauty and the….best” (relates to famous fairytale “The Beauty and the Beast) where beauty refers to the car, and under the words ‘The best’ is the list of all service package you get when buying the car.

Idioms that have both a literal and idiomatic meaning are often used creatively in wordplay as in example below:

Thorntons new chocolates bars. Not everyone’s a fruit and nut case. Thorntons bring you a new selection of chunky chocolate bars. Milk chocolate. Dark chocolate. Autumn Nuts. Toffee. Winter Nut and Fruit. And Ginger. You’re spoilt for choice.

So spoil yourself

Company plays with the idiom ‘to be a nut case’ which means ‘to be mad’, which in this case idicates strong attraction consumer to the chocolate.
If only the words are used in right context, the company gains positive original effect.

Sometimes however, wordplays meant to create humour, can seem offensive for some people. British company ‘French Connection UK” used controversial pun in their brand: FCUK. When the company launched campaign in conservative Singapore, there was widespread outrage. The Advertising Standards Authority received 27 complaints about the logo. And a British judge branded the campaign “tasteless and obnoxious” during a court case involving the company.

However, this controversial slogan helped
increase profits of the company by 84% during the year when another controversial campaign was launched.