One might argue that a viral video stops being viral when the programme it is promoting has to promote the video itself… Still, fun though.

Pretty advert, sure, but it’s that last card, the tagline, that annoys me. Any GCSE student – let alone a copywriter at a major agency, working on a huge campaign for a massive client – could tell you that you can’t say “less emissions”. It should be “fewer emissions”, as “emissions” is a countable noun. I’d be perfectly happy with “less gunk emitted”. Even “less gas” would be fine. But absolutely not “less emissions”.

That said, Fowler says that

less can be idiomatically used with plural nouns when these denote something closer to an amount than a numerical quantity, as with distances, periods of time, ages, and sums of money: less than 5 miles to go | less than six weeks | children less than three years old | less than £100

In this context, I suppose, “emissions” is denoting the total amount of gunk being emitted, so this could, feasibly, be correct. I’m not convinced, though – it just seems sloppy to me, using ungrammatical English to fit the meter of the tagline.

The Engine Room (a blog about language, not cars) has an interesting discussion about the same thing…

Bizarre. See also this terribly earnest BBC News report…

Sergey Brin, utterly bemused, in the background – quality.

You need the free Macromedia Flash Player to watch this video. Download it here.

If you’re reading this in a feedreader, or in Facebook or the like, you’ll have to click through to the actual post. Make sure you do, though – it’s awesome.

Heh – in America, they call Wally Waldo. Who knew?

Thursday 7 February 2008, 9.00pm, BBC One. Be there.

Only problem I have with it is that it makes me think of British Airways. People will call it “that British Airways advert”. Surely that spoils the point somewhat…?