Comcast’s Marketing Play: Create a New Vocabulary
Neologisms are cool.
They really are. At least to word-nerd types like me. Nothing proves that the English language is alive and kickin’ more than the dozens of new words that are added to the lexicon seemingly daily. Some of them can be classified buzzwords (mumblecore, anyone?) but some are really useful, and we wonder what we’ve done without them (I could have used frenemy in middle school).
So naturally my word-nerdiness was piqued by Comcast’s ads for its Triple Play package—TV, phone, and Internet combo—which feature neologisms describing the people who happily enjoy Triple Play, as well as the product itself. This collection of [mostly] portmanteau words even has a portmanteau name: TripleSlanguage. See what they did there? Good stuff.
TripleSlanguage’s website features an interactive flash card for each word and a short animation illustrating its usage. I don’t know about you, but I telebinge weekly. There’s a short quiz that will declare you a Triple Slangfessor if you pass. That’s Mrs. Slangfessor to you.
The site also includes a call for new vocabulary submissions. At press time it didn’t seem as if any had been submitted—or at least not greenlighted by Comcast. Personally, I’m too busy televisiphonernetting to submit one right now, but I encourage you to try it out.
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Jay Ferrari said,
on September 11th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Does Comcast have a new word for customers who use too much bandwidth, which means they get their internet access disconnected?
Downliabilty?
Eric said,
on September 11th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
New words are fun. I like the one I just came across while checking out doubletongued.com: whimperative
http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/whimperative/
“Oh, and next Friday is Hawaiian shirt day. [silence] So, you know, if you want to you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.”
Mmm yeah, that’d be great.
Fun post, Sarah!