Something awful is happening in the world of Spanish marketing. Everyone is turning Spanglish, lazy and hashtag happy.

I get it, English is important. Opportunities within the current lacklustre Spanish job market are greatly improved if you have a decent level of English. Because of this Spain is experiencing a boom in language learning, with academies full to the rafters and demand to learn English at an all time high. And, don’t get me wrong, that’s great. But it’s paving the way for lazy marketing – branding teams and Facebook and Twitter accounts cling onto this and try to make a quick buck in such a way that leaves a sour taste in my typically English mouth.

I’ve been bottling up hate for this type of strange and infuriating marketing for a while now. Here are some of the main offenders…

It’s been an especially important year for music festivals, what with the influx of lowers, sounders, dcoders and fibers. I can only imagine that the conversation between the marketing assistant and the marketing director for Benidorm’s Low Festival went a little something like this:
“Hey, why not stick an -er on the end of the name of the festival, right, so we can address the attendees with a vaguely sounding English word? Everyone is learning English now and it will make us sound über cool and down with the kids”
“Yeah, wicked, why don’t we make it even more wretch-worthy and stick a hashtag on it too. People will flock to our festival and we can begin our plan of world domination starting with mediocre music and ridiculously expensive beer”.
Take a look at the well-curated tweets below. C’mon, guys, #BeRealBeSounder!!!!!

I wonder how many lowers, sounders, dcoders and fibers are also #LeCoolers? Sadly, readers of the Valencian constituent of online magazine franchise Le Cool do not escape this type of marketing which, ironically, is anything but cool.

But it was this tweet from Volkswagen España that really tipped me over the edge.

Despite searching for more information about this new, hip “sport”, it seems that most of The Internet has no idea what the hell this campaign’s about. (In case you thought Paterning had something to do with a thrillseeking escape mission out of the Valencian town of Paterna, you were sorely mistaken!)
Apparently Volkswagen are shortly going to reveal the meaning behind the enigma – as if it were one big secret. Paterning. We’ll give you one bloody guess what the whole thing’s about before you even watch the non-sensical advert below.

Are they…are they trying to say that being a dad is the new “extreme and emotional sport”? Are there really men out there who need a car advert to reassure them that fatherhood is cool? Will buying a Volkswagen make you a great dad and as #fashion as “typical men with typical interests” Lander, Diego and Miki? Can you relate to them? Because you should! Let’s compare having a baby to bungee jumping and going running. Let us justify you having children while reasserting your masculinity. Fantastic.

Which brings me nicely to Sepia favourite #RUNNING. To quote from our article (yes, our feelings about this are so strong that we dedicated a whole article to it):

Qué coño es eso del running. ¿Qué somos, gilipollas? Se dice correr. CORRER. C-O-R-R-E-R. Con lo rico que es el castellano y todos estos idiotas tienen que decirlo en inglés para sentirse importantes. No lo entiendo, y me enerva. Estoy convencido de que hay un porcentaje de lerdos que jamás saldría a correr si no pudiera llamarlo running.

#Running is #trending in Spain. If you go for a stroll in the Turia riverbed in Valencia, you can’t move for #runners. That’s all well and good, but the thing that really gets our goat is when people pedantically announce “Yo soy runner” or “Yo hago running”. Why, may I ask, do people have an incessant need to insert English words into Spanish sentences? It does not make you sound worldly or intelligent – it makes you sound like a dickhead. #Running was all too pertinent this past Sunday because of the Trinidad Alfonso marathon – something which spawned the cringeworthy tag line of CIUDAD DEL RUNNING alongside the vom-inducing hashtag #ValenciaEsRunning.

Wh…What does that even mean?! Are we all running? Who are we running from? What about those of us who were still in bed at 12? Surely if they’re using the gerund, they should have used está? There are so many things wrong with this!

This Valencia-based loan company went one step further on their quest for English language-based acceptance – they just flung an -ing on the end of Spanish verb disfrutar (to enjoy). Disfruting. Not enjoying, not disfrutando, DISFRUTING. After all, nothing says “enjoyment” more than selling your car and renting it back off a credit company.

Another delight on the streets of Valencia is betting shop Juegging. “Here, Pablo, just stick an -ing on the end of juego and we’ll have a fashionable, punny name for the bookies. Sorted”

And let’s not forget Barcelona-based low-cost airline Vueling. Maybe Pablo from Juegging helped them pick out this beauty during an #afterwork drinking session down the pub.

But, hey, at least we know where I’ll be opening my next bank account – in ING, of course, thanks to their superb campaign about fresh banking. I’m sure they’ll care about my money as much as they care about their use of gratuitous English.

A new evil has recently been spawned at the hands of home decor chain Conforama, who seem to have jumped on the old anglicismo bandwagon a year too late. Your adverts requesting images of Spaniards “practicando #sofing” are actually more likely to make me practicar vomiting a little bit in my mouth. Here‘s the ad should you wish to send Conforama a picture of your settee covered in chunder.

Hey, marketers, I doubt you’re actually capturing any new fans or clients with this obscene splicing of the Spanish and English language. Let me help you on your way to an English B2 by throwing out a few more gerunds that better suit your schemes:

• Infuriating
• Exasperating
• Frustrating
• Fucking mierding

And, for the love of God, please, if you’re going to use English words, use the correct apostrophe and not the accent key! ´’´’´’´’´’´’´’!

Just one more thing while we’re at it, marketers. What’s with all the click-baiting and #recycling of news stories and web content?

The worst culprits? We’ll not name and shame. But nearly every news story that you see being reeled off one particular regurgitating machine -that defines itself as something along the lines of “future cultura pop, lol”- has already been churned out by many other publications, namely Vice and music news website Supajam. And it’s starting to get ridiculous. In the space of a week you may see the same story repeated on your Facebook newsfeed 3, 4 or even 5 times, with hundreds of gormless people hitting “Me gusta” because of the items too-risqué-4-U content or because they didn’t have the gumption to have read it from the original source where it was probably better written in the first place.

And let’s not even go into all the shite TV ads that have been released in Spain recently – Lotería, Mahou, Toys “R” Us… We’ll leave that for another day.

Thanks for reading, #Sepioners!