‘Won’t people welcome a warmer winter, though?’
IF you are advertising a product or promoting an event, it is important that you get your message across well, and that it can’t be easily misunderstood. Those long in the tooth will remember the slogan “You’re never alone with a Strand”.
It won awards, but people started to associate Strand cigarettes with loneliness, and were discouraged from smoking them.
Nearer to home there was an exhibition at the Fishing Heritage Centre in the early 2000s called “It’s Grim in Grimsby!”
Now the idea was to promote our town’s legendary origins, but the words were certainly open to another interpretation. I recall a miserable November afternoon when it was starting to snow, and catching sight of a bus going down Freeman Street that was promoting this particular display.
My reaction wasn’t to think of Grim and Havelok, but of how grim and dreary it was that day! Not what was Richard Doughty’s intention when he dreamt up the tag line! Moving to the present day, the Met Office have warned that without action to reduce global greenhouse actions sledging (not that engaged in by Aussie cricketers!) and snowball fights could be confined to history. Indeed by 2080 only higher ground and parts of Northern Scotland would experience lying snow and sub-zero daytime temperatures.
But won’t people welcome warmer winters, and the disappearance of snow and ice? The cold kills the vulnerable, who are frightened to go outside and risk falling down.
And who of whatever age would want to re-experience the likes of 2018’s Beast from the East?
I feel that when it comes to the case for taking measures to combat climate change, the Met Office have shot themselves in the proverbial foot.