I’ll Take “No Edge,” Please

Snowboarding is great, in and of itself. So why do business leaders feel the need to lace their presentations with “edginess?”

Shortly after my post on making snowboarding safe for boring people, I received an e-mail from someone who pointed me to a snowboard-related commercial website. All in all it was a worthwhile view.

But there was something about it that bothered me. The copy on the site was informative, well-written, and even useful. But from time to time it veered into sexual innuendo, juvenile humor, and more simply, crude language. Actually, this happened only a few times, which means that when it did appear, it was even more out of place.

I guess that this kind of language that makes a publication “edgy.”

If you say so. But does that make it attractive? Not in my book. It’s something I put up with rather than find attractive.

There’s a difference between going up to the line and crossing it. There are, for example, a number of popular songs that talk about having sex in the back of a car. And automakers have used seductive models in their advertisements, just like many other companies. But it would be a stretch then for Chevrolet to run a print advertisement with the tagline “Because it helps you get laid,” or something like that.