Munraj 🥭

Please do not write alt text like these ads by MullenLowe for RNIB and Cannes. I wrote about this in more detail earlier this year, when an ad campaign described images like the 9/11 falling man and the Tiananmen Square protestor, using flowery language of the kind you should always avoid when writing alt text. But these ads outside the Palais at Cannes are arguably worse. Fearless Girl – Alt text is not meant to be a cryptic ‘guess the ad’ clue. If the statue is standing in front of a bull, say it’s a bull, the Wall Street f-ing bull, not a ‘huge, muscular, horned beast’. This is not a poetry class or an ad for Roget’s Thesaurus. KFC – it’s a copy-only ad with FCK written on the bucket. Reproduce the copy, don’t describe it like some Radio 4 gameshow where you’re not allowed to name the brand. Kaepernick – as above. And don’t editorialise in such an uninformed way – the ad came out before George Floyd and wasn’t ‘mimicking’ anything. Burger King – it shouldn’t take five times longer to read the alt text than it does to look at the ad. You’re meant to be doing a service to the reader, not burnishing your writing portfolio. I can only think RNIB agreed to this for the free media and some sense of ‘raising awareness’, knowing full well that it’s a guide to exactly what NOT to do when it comes to writing alt text. And let's not even get into Cannes continuing to celebrate 18 x Grand Prix winner Fearless Girl, created on behalf of asset management firm State Street, who at the time were making a $5m out-of-court settlement to their female and black employees for claims of historic underpayment, and to this day remain in litigation with the female sculptor for restricting her creative freedom. Only a few years earlier, they were at the centre of the Occupy Wall Street protests, until the reputation-washing job was complete and they went from pariahs to purposeful heroes. OK, I got into it.