How I failed to notice it before I do not know, but the other night I heard what might be the most useless ass radio commercial in the history of the earth. Yes, the earth. All of it. Back to a time before both radio and commercials, but not before the earth, obviously.
It’s for a store called Mobile Clinic, or so I thought. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a Canadian chain that both repairs cell phones and buys and sells used ones. Cool service. I’ve never used it myself, but I’ll definitely keep it in mind. Or at least I would if not for one extremely silly thing they did.
At the end of the ad, the friendly voice helpfully reminds us that “that’s clinic with 2 Ks.”
“What!?” Proclaimed my brain, which while not always the most useful thing in the world does do pretty well with words a lot of the time. “Why are you reminding me about a second K when there exists not a first one in the word “clinic”?”
So off to Google I went, whereupon I discovered that the place isn’t called Mobile Clinic at all, but rather “mobile Klinik.”
“What in the pirouetting fuck,” I wondered.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t get used to company’s spelling words stupidly for trademark purposes or because they think it makes them look cool. It’s part of life now and there’s nothing I can do about it, but I don’t have to like it and I very very don’t. But the worst thing about Mobile Klinik here isn’t simply their dumb spelling. It’s that they didn’t give me that dumb spelling during their commercial, which, it bears repeating, was on the radio. Which, it should also be pointed out, is an entirely auditory medium. Which means, Mr. Klinik With 2 Ks, that I can’t just take a look at the screen while you’re talking, say “ha ha, I see what you did there, please fuck off” and move on.
How hard would it have been to spell it out once and then do your cute little “remember, that’s Klinik with 2 Ks” thing? Not very is the answer. It would save every listener who isn’t already familiar with you a whole lot of confusion and might even have made me slightly less angry about your dumb name. As it is now, though, I don’t know how I feel about trusting you with my technology when you can neither compose a proper advertisement nor handle a dictionary.