PL Ad Copy #27 – Introducing “Pure Love Chooses Everyone!”

[Logbook Chapters]

Welcome to Pure Love Chooses Everyone!

Pure Love Chooses Everyone! is an exciting new catch-phrase from B. Willard’s PL Industries!

Pure Love Chooses Everyone! has everything you could want in a marketing catch-phrase! To demonstrate, let’s examine it in light of the celebrated master of persuasive language (“employee satisfaction” over “employee strike” to bend a union to your will; “death tax” over “estate tax” to further entrench an aristocracy of inherited wealth; “exploring for energy” over “drilling for oil” to barrel past environmental concerns; etc.) Dr. Frank Luntz’s “Ten Rules for Effective Language”:

  1. Simplicity? Check. All those words are primordially simple. “Pure” “Love” “Choose” “Everyone”. We all know what those words mean; how they make us feel; how they empower us; how they make us swoon.
  2. Brevity? Check. Seven syllables borders on several, but there are definitely enough dramatic high points (Love; Every) to sustain that many sounds.
  3. Credibility? What is more reliable than Pure Love?
    [You could argue that we cannot deliver Pure Love, and so by promising Pure Love we undermine our credibility. But we don’t offer Pure Love, we only affirm Pure Love. You could argue that we are not wise enough to think and live Pure Love, and by claiming insight into the underlying principle of Reality, we undermine our credibility. But we don’t claim to fathom Pure Love, just to be a few more poor sinners here with enough sense to understand that Pure Love is our only hope and Pure Love is aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, kind, wise, and joyful; though not enough sense to fully understand, follow, and live Pure Love. You could argue that if we are not selling Pure Love or our Pure Love expertise, we have no real product. Well, OK, maybe not; but Pure Love is what everyone needs and so we’d do well to affirm it and to pledge allegiance to it and try to get better at understanding, believing in, caring about, following, and living it; and, then again, Pure Love really does choose everyone, and that message really is important, and it really does help us all orientate ourselves properly within our own conscious spaces and within larger social, media, political, economic and etc structures, and it really does resonate with people: so publicly allying ourselves to “Pure Love chooses Everyone” could be good for our overall brand, and maybe it will help us to sell art and thought, which are not Pure Love, but which are good to the degree they harken to Pure Love. OK, but then couldn’t you argue that by claiming to create art and thought that harken to Pure Love, we are claiming more wisdom than is ours and thus cannot help but undermine our own credibility? Well, OK, but that’s what it is to be an artist or a thinker: you try to harken to Pure Love and pray for enough wisdom to share your results in a beautifully helpful way.]
  4. Consistency? Well, sure, as long as we keep saying it. “Read my lips: Pure Love chooses Everyone; the very best tax policy for a given time and place is not an eternal law, indeed economic policy is never an eternal Truth; what is eternally True is that Pure Love is the way and Pure Love is relentlessly kind; either that is True and we find a way to better and better understand that and how that is True and live in accordance with that Truth, or none of us individually or collectively have any hope for a path that we can understand, believe in, or even care about: so let’s reach out with our whole beings (ideas, emotions, Light within) for an ever wider and deeper sense of how we creatures down hear in the valley of creation are all really in this together — bound together in and through the Light that knows the Way.”
  5. Novelty? Hmmm. On the one hand, what is more obvious than the necessity of Pure Love (without a meaningful relationship to a Knowledge that is also Reality and most fundamentally Loving Kindness, none of us can find a set of ideas and feelings that we can really understand, believe in, care about, or follow anywhere coherently forward) and the possibility of Pure Love (why not?? Obviously, the intellect and emotions do not really understand Pure Love; but they don’t really understand anything!!!! and where is it written that we are just intellect and emotions? where is it written that we don’t have Pure Love shining through our every conscious moment? where is it written that Pure Love aka Light cannot relate meaningfully to ideas and feelings? of course, ideas and feelings are limited and cannot fully grasp the grandeur that Pure Love would have to be in order to be Pure Love; however, limited insight is not necessarily the same as inadequate insight: limited insight simply implies the need for constant humility, caution, effort: awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, competency, kindness, shared joy [these inborn guardrails of thought and action both demand we seek for the wisdom of Pure Love and demand we admit that we will never translate Pure Love completely adequately into our merely human thoughts, words, and deeds])??? On the other hand, it is not always easy to keep this Truth at the forefront of our thought; so much so that at times a phrase like “Pure Love chooses Everyone” can seem shockingly original. Also: look: we can vary it like this: “chooses everybody”; “chooses all”; “accepts us all”, etc.
  6. Sounds beautiful? Pleasing texture? Hmmm. “Pure Love chooses everyone.” “Pure Love chooses all.” “Pure Love chooses everybody”. Lots of Os. Lots of vowels. Where do the stresses fall? Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth. Kind of bunched up. But in practice — especially when we break the phrase up like we’ve been doing on the T-shirts — there’s such a long break between the second and third and the fourth is so clearly stronger than the third, that on the whole it is not without a pleasing rolling rhythm. Also note that when we break the phrase up into “Pure Love” and then a bit lower down on the shirt, mug, page or etc, “chooses everyone” we create a sort of punch-line effect, which adds to the overall novelty within the experience of interacting with this delightfully infectious catch phrase.
  7. Speaks aspirationally? Self-evident.
  8. Visualizes? Uh, well, choosing is an action. Perhaps you don’t see the Pure Love acting, but you feel it acting; you kind of emotionally view it: First the “Pure Love” itself tugs you towards a higher type of hug; and then you feel it choosing, not so much grabbing as accepting, affirming, embracing, really accepting everyone, and perhaps you kind of see everyone in the world shot through and surrounded by an infinite Light of searing compassionate joyful fun frolicsome friendship.
  9. Asks a question? Yeah, I think it does: I think it says, “what would Pure Love be?” “what would a Love that chooses everyone be? what would it mean?” “could it be real?” “could it be right?” “what the hell am I doing with my life, anyway??”
  10. Provides context and explains relevance? With this one, he seems to want the slogan to automatically connect people to some key issue that is on everyone’s mind and that is very relevant to the sloganer’s mission. Examples he gives include (1) “Have it your way” to allow Burger King to allow people to recall and become more consciously aware of their underlying frustration at the lack of individual attention given by fast food restaurants and to simultaneously see in Burger King a champion for their individual concerns, preferences, and deep, abiding insights into how exactly a hamburger should be constructed; and (2) “It’s morning again in America” (Reagan 1984), which he doesn’t explain, but which I guess asked people to recall how uncertain American power and prosperity had felt in the late 70s and to become more aware of and certain of the relative strength and security felt in early 1980s USA, and to simultaneously understand that this change was the creation of Ronald Reagan (I was not really paying attention to politics at this time in human history, but I’m guessing this is the association-chain sought and at least to some degree captured by the slogan). OK, so does “Pure Love chooses everyone” connect to a larger story hanging on the tip of everyone’s tongue? Does it simultaneously conjure a popular problem and posit a viable solution? But of course! What could be more common than the longing for a Reality that didn’t let anyone down???

Clearly we’ve a great saying on our hands. Indeed, much greater than the examples given by Dr. Frank Luntz in his famous “Words that Work” with subtitle “It’s not what you say; it’s what people hear”. “Pure Love chooses everyone” does not use some merely “possibly true” or “true-enough” or “includes true-ish elements” problem/solution pairing. “Pure Love chooses everyone” does not merely pretend to once and for all answer the vague longing at the base of all human longings. [Specific longings attach themselves to the vague longing, and in this way pretend to be salvation; traditional ad campaigns tap into, exacerbate, and manipulate this inborn sinfulness by vaguely sketching tales of specific salvations (“cool”, “beautiful”, “loved”, “respected”, “desired”) and specific products.] [Example of the standard advertising nefariousness: “i’m lovin’ it!” combined with friendly fun-filled scenes of youthful grandeur. Which hints towards a story of how I need to be cool and accepted and also in a positive warm environment and healthy and active and one of the gang and loved and cherished as I powerfully and self-assuredly unfold my individual specialness, and how I can get that at McDonald’s.] NO! “Pure Love chooses everyone” puts its cards on the table and we the audience have no choice but to stare in starry-eyed wonder: “Oh! Yes! That’s the way forward! That’s the only answer to the only question! What is meaningful? What is worthwhile? What is good enough? Where do I belong? Where to take my stand? How to think and act? Don’t they all reduce to ‘What is love? What should I love and what’s love should I seek?’?? And isn’t the answer to that question nothing more nor less than: “The Way is Pure Love: The Kindness that accepts, cherishes, and lifts up everyone always no matter what.”

So step right up! Prance up to our podium? Drop your pennies in our juice jar and take a swig from our fantastic fountain of Purest, Most Eternal, Most Compassionately Wise and thus Actually Helpful Love!

Our original Pure Love sales pitch, where we first pointed out the relationship between the underlying vague longing, specific desires, spiritual salvation (a concept that points towards a vaguely-fathomable eternally-expanding all-uplifting notion) as the only viable answer to the vague longing, and advertising as exacerbating and exploiting our inborn self-manipulation of tricking our own subconsciouses into supposing the vague longing can be answered by xyz particular good (combinations of things like that partner, those friends, that safety, that prestige, that certainty, etc): All this can be found initially brush-stroked on Pure Love for Sale Or you can just get the longer-play version in Love at a Reasonable Price, Volume I: First Loves.

Buy Buy Buy!

Spring 2019 From-Bartleby.com will host our first book, “Love at a Reasonable Price Volume 1: First Loves”.
PL Industries (Zazzle Store) info-carries greeting cards, T-shirts, & etc (mostly riffs on Pure Love and Something Deeperism)
WAP offers WAP Cat Totes & Etc! (ie: Novelty Gift Items)

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All Content on this Site is Copyright by Andrew Mackenzie Watson
Disclaimer: You can’t buy or sell Pure Love, and even if you could, you probably shouldn’t.

Repenting of it all: We’ve exceeded ourselves; we’ve misunderstood the nuances; we’ve lost track of our hearts; we repent; we drop it all and beg for the chance to start from 0.

Still Talking:

This advertisement is in service of our endeavors as authors and purveyors of novelty goods. https://www.From-Bartleby.com has an overview of our recent activities and you’ll be able to purchase “First Loves” there this Spring for, I’m sure, a reasonable price. Honestly, lately we’ve been mostly just doing these Pure Love Ad Copy entries. We don’t know why. But they’re being gathered along with product descriptions into something of an evolving ebook here: [Logbook Chapters]. We’ve opened a Zazzle store with, for example, “Pure Love chooses everyone” T-Shirts: PL Industries (Zazzle Store). So, yeah, we dunno; all this activity pouring out of us because because

Author: B Willard

Copyright: A Watson