What do you think of the Adidas slogan ‘Impossible is Nothing’? They use some kind of double negative here and inverted the word order. In my opinion they somehow have overdone it, the message is lost.
I think there are better catch phrases out such as ‘Make the most of now’. What’s your take on this?[YSaerTTEW443543]
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Hi Torsten!
I have never heard this slogan! What I know is the slogan “nothing is impossible, Toyoooota” I think the meaning is different.
“impossible is nothing” for me sounds like it?s nothing to be impossible. :? It is not a double negative, it is simply impossible! So if the advertising department of addidas found such a slogan they might have been drunk or in a mental crisis to create that, also might the management have had a mental disorder to allow them a public campaign like this. Or am I one of the last dinosaurs because I can?t accept such a slogan? :shock:
Better thought through seems the Toyota slogan to me: nothing is impossible which I can invert to everything is possible? That is a statement I understand. 8)
kind regards
Michael
Hi Torsten
I wouldn’t necessarily call the slogan a double negative. For me the inversion is just a technique sometimes used for emphasis or effect. Theoretically they could also say “Possible is everything.” for effect. But I would expect this sort of inversion most often in spoken English. (The emphasis would also be clearly heard on the first word.)
The question in my mind would be: Is this sentence/slogan going to have the desired advertising effect?
Maybe they expect it to work precisely because it’s not “standard” word order. People will pay attention and remember because it’s different?
Or will it backfire because the inversion of the words is irritating? By backfire I mean ‘cause negative feelings’ which could negatively affect sales. Michael’s reaction seems to support this possibility.
One thing is clear, though. If they’d chosen to say “Nothing is impossible”, they wouldn’t get the kind of immediate reaction that “Impossible is nothing” creates.
Just a couple of thoughts from someone who’s definitely not an advertising expert… 
Amy
Hi,
even if the corporation like Adidas has done something
without luck and has spoiled a bit of our trust in common sense,correct language,fair business - it does not mean they are going to loose anything.
We may be all surprise how powerful are stones once moved from a pick of mountain.
They will smash with they crazy advertising (libido inside libido) all doubts.
Finally final, we find ourself some time from now talking to clients :
yes be sure Sir impossible is nothing here.
regards
Jan
Hi Jan!
I think you have hit the nail on his head! A sentence like "impossible is nothing " has to do with fairness. Like you mentioned correct language means fair buisiness. And if anybody intentionally uses such an incorrect usage of language I can?t trust him. And if anybody uses it in a public campaign than I feel suggested to feel kidded. Should I allow them to kid me? I think I do not need to! It?s only a stupid cheap trick to sale me an inferior product for a high prize! That is what I think if I read such a slogan!
Kind regards
Michael
Strangely enough, I don’t see anything wrong with this slogan. Or perhaps I’m not interpreting it correctly? Doesn’t it mean “Impossible is no big feat (for us/you)”, i.e. we/you can do more than the impossible?
Now I fear it’s not as simple as that! :?
Hey guys,
When I heard this slogan, I didn’t think about it like a grammaticaly wrong sentence.
Because there are too many things I don’t know about English, I always try to feel what they want to tell, instead of trying to understand every single words.
Impossible is nothing= It might be Impossible if I wasn’t wearing Adidas, but (thanks to Adidas) Impossible is not even worth a single braincell of mine to get busy by worrying about the future, because the otherwise Impossible THING is gonna be defetead by Adidas.
Simple as that.
Impossible is nothing, isn’t is it? 
Spencer
That slogan Impossible is Nothing doesn’t mean the same thing as, “Nothing is impossible.” When we say something is “nothing”, we mean that it’s very easy, so I understand the slogan to mean, “People say that’s impossible, but for me it’s a piece of cake!” We say, for example, “That job is nothing!” meaning that it’s extremely easy. “I can’t jump over that fence. It’s nothing.” “It’s nothing to beat that team.”
So, I think the slogan is clever. It basically means, “Sure I can do the impossible. It’s nothing!”
Amy, it’s a well-known principle of advertising that sales don’t depend on whether or not people like a slogan, but how long it sticks in their heads. Irritating slogans stick longer, and they create more lasting brand recognition, which translates to sales.
Hi Conchita!
Might be that I?m too sceptically sometimes. Your interpretation of that sentence is also a possibility of the sense they wanted to share to us. But however, it sounded better to me if they would say: “It is not a big feat for us to do or to develop the impossible!” or “Impossibilties are no rightous requests for us”! Like I mentioned, maybe that I?m one of the last dinosaurs but my suggestions to express this sense I could accept for an honest advertisement.
The sentence “Impossible is nothing” suggests me to be exaggerated impressive. And if anybody tries to be exaggerated impressive (my experience of life) he/she tries to omit hidden defects and I?ll become conversative. Am I wrong?
Please enlighten me if i am!
Michael
Hey, this is exactly what I sad, just in much better shape!
JAMIE-HE’S GOOD TO BE AROUND
How’s that for an ad?
Or: JAMIE- NOTHING IS NOTHING
Spencer
Hi Michael,
I think that You’re right, but why not to make things easy?
I like dinos though, especially the T-REX!
Spencer
Hi Amy!
Might be that you are not an advertising expert. I am not one too. But you and I are consumers and in this sense I always have a look on what advertising does to me.
Right is also that there is a discussion about the sentence Impossible is nothing. Anyway, anyhow it touches me unpleasant!
By the way, who did use this sentence for advertising? Bionade or Nutella? I don?t feel any interests in that!
Michael
Hi Jamie, thanks for pointing out this distinction, makes me look at the slogan from a different angle. To an American this meaning of Impossible is Nothing might be obvious. What about the German market though?
Actually, they are running a campaign now promoting ‘The Impossible Team’. That’s interessting, istn’t it? I had started this discussion because I had read in an article that another German company Douglas (‘ou’ is pronounced as [ʊ]) had changed their slogan from Come in and find out to a German one. A survery had shown that many customers interpreted the slogan rather negatively thinking that they had to come and get out or find their way out. So, the slogan itself might have created awareness but the question is did it also raise sales or at least promote the brand in a positive way?[YSaerTTEW443543]
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Hi Torsten
Although the word “nothing” can mean “very easy” or “child’s play” (as Conchita and Jamie pointed out), I’m still not convinced that this is the intended message for the “Impossible is Nothing” slogan. Or, at least not the only intended message. I also don’t think all native speakers would understand this to be the only meaning. I think that native speakers would also debate the meaning of the slogan — just as we’re doing here. Does it mean “Nothing is impossible” or does it mean “Doing the impossible is easy”?
I guess one reason I still tend toward the “Nothing is impossible” meaning is that Adidas uses well-known sports figures to promote their products. Does Adidas want to imply that these champions won easily? Wouldn’t that be a little insulting to the people who worked and trained for years in order to achieve “the impossible”? OK, maybe Adidas wants to imply that using their products makes it easy to achieve “the impossible”. That would be a very old advertising ploy. It’s also a very obvious tactic and I think consumers tend to see through this kind of message.
There’s nothing terribly impressive or dramatic about achieving something easily. I think Adidas wants to point out that their spokespeople (sports champions) set records that people said couldn’t be done at all. They achieved the impossible. That’s dramatic. And maybe Adidas wants to imply that the company works just as hard to achieve “impossible” products. Saying “Nothing is impossible” is not a dramatic sentence. It’s a standard sentence and therefore ‘ho-hum’. But “Impossible is nothing”? Now, that’s different!
Another reason I think that the intended meaning is “Nothing is impossible” is that Adidas uses this as a global slogan and I don’t think “nothing” would be understood as “easy” by most non-native speakers.
As I mentioned before, “Impossible is nothing” definitely gets a much more immediate reaction than a more “standard” sentence. And maybe that was ultimately the main goal.
Regarding the “Come in and find out” slogan, I’ve got an additional thought. I’ve noticed that some (not all) Germans have become quite annoyed by the proliferation of English in German advertising. Especially since the beginning of the war in Iraq. Some Germans react negatively simply because a slogan is in English or has some English words in it. I wonder if the survey you mentioned asked about this aspect. Do you happen to know?
Amy
PS
Regarding “The Impossible Team”:
If you said “He’s impossible”, I think most people would understand this to mean “He’s horrible! It’s impossible to deal with him.” Another debatable slogan. 
Hi Amy,
Just found this DW-World article which might provide some additional information regarding our discussion: Opinion: Desperately Ditching Denglish
By the way Marc Young refers to perfect received pronunciation in this article, a term that is usually used by linguists teaching English as a second language. For some reason the abbreviation PR (Received Pronunciation) is commonly used by ESL profs at German universities while it might not be known in English speaking countries. Why is that?[YSaerTTEW443543]
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Amy, I completely disagree with you about how native English speakers would process that slogan. The arguments you give in favor of the “nothing is impossible” meaning are really arguments FOR understanding it as “the impossible is easy”. Native speakers who are halfway alert would quickly understand it as a play on words that is meant to say that people who easily do the impossible choose Adidas.
Of course the company doesn’t want to imply that that top athletes achieved their sports successes easily. They are saying that what they achieved is almost impossible, or IS impossible. The message is that Adidas are the shoes chosen by athletes for who effortlessly achieve the impossible, and that if the consumer wears them, he is joining that elite group. The idea is not to downgrade the achievements of the athletes, but to make the consumer feel that by wearing Adidas he is upgrading himself. It’s offering the consumer greatness by association, which is a very common advertising strategy.
The fact that Adidas uses the words as a worldwide slogan means nothing. Companies frequently use the same slogan or advertisement worldwide without any regard as to whether people outside the original country will understand it the way it’s intended. Sometimes the results are catastrophic:
An ad agency where I worked had to make up a Spanish slogan for one insurance company, because there was trouble in the Southwest with their English one, which was “Farmers gets you back where you belong.” It was a very effective slogan with the Anglos, but many Hispanic consumers in the Southwest understood it as meaning the company would send them back to Mexico.
Some worldwide companies based in Germany make one advertisement for the whole world, not seeming to know what effect the ad has in North America. Those Mentos ads in the 1990s that were supposed to look cool and happy in Europe looked bizarre and spooky to Americans, partly because of people’s movements and facial expressions. The announcer who said, “Mentos – The Freshmaker!” sounded American to Europeans, but to Americans he sounded like a German straining hard to imitate an American accent. This made the ads even more mysterious to Americans.
More recently, Allianz had an advertisement with a rich race driver and his small daughter. It was supposed to give a high-class but “warm” image to the company, but the little girl was dressed just like the girl in the Addams Family, and the father had stiff German posture and mannerisms that made him look to Americans like a marionette. Again, the overall effect of the ad was spooky.
My American bank has been bought by the Royal Bank of Scotland. The advertisements are made by the British. (I know, because they were in my local branch shooting a commercial.) It seems the ads are usually made IN Britain. Although the actors are reasonably good at American accents, they have strange physical movements, strange facial expressions, strange haircuts, and even the way their clothes hang doesn’t look right to people here. The effect on the American viewer is one of, “There’s something wrong, but I don’t know what,” which is not the image a company should want to convey to consumers. If the actors looked the same but spoke with British accents instead, Americans wouldn’t notice anything wrong.
Torsten, PR stands for “public relations”. The abbreviation RP is known by English profs at American universities, but we don’t talk about it much, because it’s not the target pronunciation.
It’s funny that Germans misinterpreted that Douglas slogan, because I have a German student at one company who always asks me, “Can you find out?” when he wants to ask me, “Can you find your way out?”
Jamie, according to Acronymfinder.com the abbreviation PR has 77 expressions with Public Relations probably being the most popular one. However, now that Google has become a household name more and more people learn about the term PageRank which was invented by Larry Page, co-founder of Google. The PageRank technology is one of the secrets of Google’s success and almost every web site owner knows about it.[YSaerTTEW443543]
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That isn’t really much different from what I said, Jamie. I was also trying to imagine what the ad agency and Adidas might have considered during the decision-making process for the slogan. Going global with a slogan means you’ve got to have a slogan that works globally … one way or another … and works even for those who are still half asleep. 
I think the interpretation of the slogan will ultimately be based on the rest of the ad (the whole context) and to a large degree whether the person is a native-speaker or not.
Hi Torsten
People in the States usually simply say “PR” when talking about “public relations” (i.e. “PR” is used not just in written form). If I heard someone say “PR” I would automatically understand “public relations” unless the context clearly indicated some other meaning.
As to “received pronunciation”, I would also expect the abbreviation to be “RP”. I can’t explain its being referred to as “PR”.
Amy
Hi Amy,
I’ve just realized that RP is different from PR – thanks for pointing that out. Yes, I think in Germany many people also use the abbreviation PR (usually pronounced the German way) to refer to Public Relations.
As for PageRank, I agree you need the appropriate context to understand what is meant and usually it the term is used a word rather than the abbreviation PR.[YSaerTTEW443543]
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Hi Torsten
Thanks. I’d heard Germans say “PR” before, but I’d never been sure if it was just a phenomenon at the companies I work in or not.
Your “Denglisch” link was interesting. (For some reason the page wouldn’t load this morning, so I wasn’t able to look at it til much later.) I work in a number of companies where the parent company is in the States, and the “Denglisch” in those companies is especially noticeable. (“geordert” instead of “bestellt”, etc.)
Speaking of “RP”, I can still remember the first time I met one of my German friends. We met in the States, years before I came to Germany. She spoke what sounded like perfect British English. If she hadn’t already told me she was from Germany, I’d have assumed she was British. And to this day I can still remember my naive reaction. I thought it was very strange that a German sounded so very British. :lol:
Amy