Sour Grapes

Fact-free advertising

There are many examples of this kind of advertising around, but the ones that are currently bugging me are from Temple University. You can find several examples of what I'm talking about on the special website they set up for this marketing campaign. I'd like to quote the one I've been hearing on the Temple radio station, WRTI, but I can't find it, so instead I've transcribed one for radio that I found on the website:

There are certain people who don't believe in the easy way out. For them, that's a cop-out.
They don't believe in cutting corners; "turning" is what corners are for.
They know that what you drive isn't as important as where you're going.
They see the road less travelled as the road with less traffic.
They realize that the only time something will come to them is if they call for a pizza. That you can't appreciate sweet if you don't taste sour once in a while.
They simply can't use the word can't.
They don't just walk the walk, they run it.
They believe that inside of them they have the capacity to make anything happen. Because inspiration, ambition and determination fit them to a "T".
They come from many places, and also from one: Temple University.

What a bunch of malarkey! If any college or university had come anywhere close to figuring out how to ensure that any set of positive characteristics—let alone these particular ones—could be used to describe their graduates, we'd all know about. Not that we'd all want to attend that school. Thinking about it now in this way reminds me of Hitler Youth, a Communist Youth League, the People's Temple, or the Moonies, where indeed the effort is to convince everybody to believe in a common set of values. Is this what a university education is all about? Ironically, I believe that Temple does a very good job of not providing the kind of education that this marketing campaign claims they do.

Original post by Namenlosen Trinker at 10/11/2007 12:38:00 PM Eastern time :: 0 comment(s) ::

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