I was wandering around Circular Quay in the centre of Sydney yesterday, taking in the sunshine and the beautiful views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Walking past an advertising hoarding, I spotted an advert for Vodafone Australia’s 4G broadband rollout that niggled with me very slightly.
The copy runs: ‘Not just fast. Fasterest.’ Yes, that’s fasterest. Not fastest. An interesting invention of a word, there. Here’s a link to the full campaign – http://www.vodafone.com.au/discover
So, how do we feel about this kind of thing? To me, it smacks a little of ad execs trying to speak ‘like the kids’ without fully realising that the kids themselves probably don’t talk this way at all. There are no doubt plenty of hip Aussie slang words that denote the full-on speed of something, but I’m guessing that most trendy, urbanite skaters don’t say ‘fasterest’. It seems a little too try-hard for my liking, but I’m sure there are those who like this creative twisting of language.
On a similar note, I’ve yet to work out why the BBC’s new comedy drama with James Corden is called ‘The Wrong Mans’ and not ‘The Wrong Men’. I’ve not caught the show yet, being away from the UK, but maybe there’s a reasonable plot reason for this ungrammatical title. We shall see.
Anyway, I hope you think this is the ‘besterest’ blog you’ve read today … (well, if you can’t beat them, join them!).
CommsBreakdown 
And more to the point, I rather doubt that super-cool young folks care less—as opposed to the American, “I could care less”, which makes NO sense, as if you *could* care less, you do in fact care at least somewhat, but I digress—about Vodafone’s ads. It’s hardly worth analysing copywriting when it’s that bad.