December 4, 2020

Time to vote for the Worst Dutch Slogans of 2020

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 3:04 pm

Regardless of the state the world’s in, some things march on, and one of those things is voting on the worst Dutch slogans of 2020.

There are 10 in the running, but let’s pick the raisins out of the porridge, as the Dutch would say. And if you follow the link below, you can cast your vote as well.

First, the obligatory dirty joke that’s surprisingly not misogynistic, from animal protection group Gaia: ‘Laat je poesje knippen voor ze begint te wippen’ (roughly, ‘Get your pussy fixed before they start reproducing’, but rhyming and a bit funnier. ‘Wippen’ here is Dutch for ‘having sex’ and amusingly enough it means ‘see-sawing’, which the Dutch associate with the act.

Then, there’s the quintessential ‘poop and fart’ joke, from Rennie, pills that help against flatulence and stomach acid: ‘Liefde maakt blind, maar je neus ruikt nog steeds een wind’ (roughly, ‘Love is blind, but your nose can still smell a wind’. Sadly, ‘blind’ (blind) and wind (wind/fart) rhyme in Dutch, but not in English.

And there’s always the Dunglish joke, that you need to know Dutch and English to understand, and that would be ‘O my goot…’ (‘oh my gutter…’) from a roofing company. ‘Goot’ is Dutch for ‘gutter’, and of course the slogan is trying to say ‘Oh my God’ in English, which in Dutch would be ”Mijn God’, with ‘God’ and ‘goot’ sounding very similar.

UPDATE: ‘Laat je poesje knippen voor ze begint te wippen’ from animal organisation Gaia won.

(Link: sloganverkiezing.nl)

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December 10, 2018

Cheesiest slogans of 2018 are up for vote

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:57 pm
Kdag2010-2

It’s that time again, time for cringeworthy bad slogans, and much like in 2016 (see link below), we’ve got a fun one in the running from a barbershop in Laren: ‘We do women, but we don’t cut their hair’ (‘We doen wel vrouwen maar knippen ze niet’). It started as a joke that their male clients and female friends thought was funny, and it kind of stuck.

And in the running, there’s always a construction-related business as always, with ‘Don’t fuck around yourself, call Ronald Schutte!’ (‘Ga niet zelf kutte, bel Ronald Schutte’). My rough translation of ‘kutte’ is basically ‘fuck around’, but in this case, it’s a verb made from the noun for female genitalia that indicates the same thing and even rhymes.

Last but not least, there’s ‘For every arse, there’s an Aarts toilet’, (‘Voor ieder reetje een Aarts W.C’tje’). Once again, the word ass ‘reet/reetje’ [diminutive] rhymes with W.C’tje’ [diminutive for toilet aka water closet = WC], the name of the company.

And you can vote here.

See also: Cheesiest business slogans of the year 2016. and Cheesiest slogans of 2017 up for vote.

UPDATE: ‘We do women, but we don’t cut their hair’ took the win, with ‘Ga niet zelf kutte, bel Ronald Schutte’ winning second place and ‘Voor ieder reetje een Aarts W.C’tje’ taking third place. Read the rest.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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January 2, 2018

Worst slogan of 2017 about sausage rolls

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 4:08 pm

Slogan-cat

The winner of the worst business slogan of 2017 is De Korenbloem in Mill with ‘Van kop tot kont, worst in de mond’ (roughly, literally and figuratively, ‘From top [head] to bottom [arse], sausage in the mouth’, as in from beginning to end, sausage in your mouth. You get the idea and it sounds gross in Dutch as well.

Second place goes to ‘Voor iedere gleuf een doos’ (Moniss packing materials, Lelystad), which is ‘For every slit (possibly, tab), there’s a box’; ‘gleuf’ is slang for female genitalia and so is ‘box’. Third place is ‘Alles om uw poes mee te verwennen. Ook als u een kater heeft (‘Everything to pamper your pussy, even if you have a (male) cat.’) from 4 Cats. Yes, the image I snapped from the Amsterdam shop is Dunglish and there should be a space between ‘cat’ and ‘food’.

This was the sixth edition of the Dutch Bad Slogans Awards and if they are not disgusting, they are usually sexist or really bad puns, from head to arse.

(Link: www.sloganverkiezing.nl)

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December 11, 2017

Cheesiest slogans of 2017 up for vote

Filed under: Animals,General by Orangemaster @ 11:52 am
Kdag2010-2

Yes, 2016 had a real winner with ‘Zit je haircut’. Pronounce ‘hair’ in English and ‘cut’ (‘kut’) in Dutch, the latter being the word for what the Brits call the ‘c-bomb’, but in this case means ‘shitty’.

Here are some contenders for the ‘Worst Business Slogans of 2017’: ‘Voor iedere gleuf een doos’ (Moniss packing materials, Lelystad), which is ‘For every slit (possibly, tab), there’s a box’. The problem is that ‘gleuf’ is slang for female genitalia and so is ‘box’. For the advance students, it might remind you a bit of this song by Herman Brood. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s ‘Wees geen domme gans, steun de Dierenambulance!’ (Animal ambulance, Amsterdam), which translates as ‘Don’t be a silly goose, support the animal ambulance!’. It rhymes in Dutch and has a cheesy, family-friendly animal pun.

And there’s always the aural squinting, where you have to read one word in Dutch and one word in English to make the joke work that in fact doesn’t work at all. In that category, there’s ‘Haring is caring’, from the herring monger at camping Bakkum near Amsterdam. ‘Haring’ (herring) is then pronounced in Dutch ‘HA-ring’, which doesn’t rhyme with ‘caring’ in English. In fact, ‘Herring is caring’ would have been less fishy.

The winners will be announced later this week.

(Link: trouw.nl)

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February 26, 2016

Groningen University wins bullshit bingo slogan award

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:31 am

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Last November we told you about the Dunglish/bullshit bingo fest that made up Dutch university slogans, and we even had a favourite horse in the running.

“One sticks out above the rest in our view, it’s the RUG with ‘Born Leaders Reach For Infinity’ that has the flow of an acronym, but the appeal of an overflowing bin bag with rotten food begging to be taken out.”

We proudly picked a winner. I even did a search using the word ‘infinity’ to find our original posting.

The second place goes to the University of Amsterdam with ‘We are U’, ‘U’ here is the Dutch word for ‘you’ and a nod to the word university, which is oddly quite North American. Third place was taken up by Leiden University and their ‘Excel in Freedom’ albeit actually in their own language ‘Excelleren in vrijheid’, which is airy, like the clouds in the sky.

These awards are part of a debate about university financing because someone paid someone good money to come up with these ridiculous slogans while universities waste money badly mimicking businesses rather than act like proper universities.

(Link: platform-hnu.nl)

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November 14, 2015

Play bullshit bingo with Dutch university slogans

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:45 pm

The Platform for the Reform of Dutch Universities (H.NU) lets all of us vote on the ‘stupidity ranking 2016’ with Dutch university slogans. Amusingly, the voting is in Dutch, but there’s enough Dunglish and misused English that many of you can join in. It’s three points for the dumbest slogan, then two points, then one point. The platform has also included the local parody version of some of them, which makes it even more fun.

The problem with these slogans, which resemble useless city marketing ones, is that they don’t relate to education. They’re too vague, trying too hard to sound like American or British universities or trying too hard altogether. One sticks out above the rest in our view, it’s the RUG with ‘Born Leaders Reach For Infinity’ that has the flow of an acronym, but the appeal of an overflowing bin bag with rotten food begging to be taken out.

(Link: platform)

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April 11, 2008

I amSterdam, Madrid is mad

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 11:41 am

You can say many bad things about Amsterdam’s city marketing campaign I AmSterdam, but at least in some respect it works. A mix of the phrase “I am Amsterdam” and “I heart Amsterdam,” the slogan lets people express their positive feelings towards the city in a tacky but unified manner.

Madrid tries to copy the formula, and copies everything that is wrong about the I AmSterdam campaign. It is tacky. You cannot force a meaningful emotional response with a cold marketing campaign. The formula replaces core values—the reasons why people like Amsterdam or Madrid—with empty slogans. And in doing so, the campaigns are insulting to their audiences’ intelligence.

But Madrid’s copy takes things one step further: it just doesn’t work. “Madrid about you” is a funny pun, but the way the logo is styled makes it say: “Madrid equals mad” (the “about you” is de-emphazised by shoving it to the bottom and printing it in a smaller font.) Critical Spanish designer Rafa Celda says in El Pais that the people who came up with this campaign are trying too hard. “This is like one of those logos that comes with a manual.”

Via Nieuws uit Amsterdam (Dutch). Photo by Matt Rubens, distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.

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