way of life!
When we first met Honda, we were worried about their global strapline, ‘The Power of Dreams’. We thought about changing it. We wondered if we could make it really small and hide it. But we learned that it came directly from the philosophy of Soichiro Honda, the company’s founder. We worked with it and used it as a way to explain Honda’s point of view. In the end, ‘the power of dreams’ turned out to be a good thing for our work.
But I’m not so sure about the line I’ve noticed Suzuki has been using to sign off its UK campaign: ‘Way of life!’ Apparently this is intended to convey that they make "vehicles that are designed for life enthusiasts – those who choose to live life to the fullest and not simply watch it go by".
But I can’t help being reminded of the strange and charming ‘Japlish’ sometime used in Japanese brand names and slogans – ‘Pocari Sweat’ drink and T shirts that say things like ‘Active sports life I maintain’.
(Kind of the Asian equivalent of western people who have T -shirts or tattoos of ‘cool’ Japanese kanji characters but don’t know what they actually mean.)
The exclamation mark on Way of Life! somehow enhances that perception. But, rather than acknowledging the Japlish vibe and exploiting it to acquire a bit of Japanese pop culture cool – like Uniqlo has been doing recently – the Suzuki UK campaign seems to be trying to ignore the whole ‘Way of Life!’ thing. Instead, it’s borrowed Harp’s old ‘Time for a Sharp Exit’ campaign and adapted it to ‘Time for a Swift Exit.’
It’s a bit of a missed opportunity, as it would have been great to see the Swift advertised with a line like,"Go super young sexy driving life like me".
