I got a subscription to Fast Company last year. Having now spent some time with the magazine, my review is: okay at best. Wired at its worst is more compelling than Fast Company at top speed. (Charles Fishman’s articles for FC are nothing short of brilliant, however.)
What signals to me that the magazine is not about innovation and risk-taking is the title of a recent “Made to Stick” column by two trendologists. The column is about slogans. The title of the piece is “Kill the Slogans Dead.”
What an uncreative, wimpy, focused-group splash of dishwater. The Raid slogan, as you might remember, is “Kills Bugs Dead.” Apparently this is ungrammatical, but so is “Think Different.”
If words are your business, have the bravery to write Kill Slogans Dead. That “the” sounds to me like every out-of-touch oldster who says “I love The Pavements new album.” Removing “the” says your readership is smart. Inserting it says you’re as tone-deaf as the companies that sloganeer unnecessarily, as per the column complaint itself.
(link).
