'New and improved' is so last year

March 31, 2008

AMY VERNER
March 29, 2008
There was a time when the word "upgrade" applied primarily to computer software and airline tickets.

These days, however, it's the tie that binds Beyonce, Tampax tampons, trend reports, self-help books and art installations.

A case could be made that the word has itself been upgraded to pop-culture coolness. More likely, upgrade is the newest way of saying "new and improved."

Robert Thompson, a professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University, agrees, pointing out that we are always looking for "new ways to say old things."

He adds that upgrading is hardwired into a makeover-obsessed society. "Aren't Oprah and Dr. Phil and The Secret and all those things about what upgrading describes? We need a lot of words for this," he says, "because we spend a lot of time thinking about it."

Or not thinking about it, at least as far as tampons are concerned. And yet the recent ad campaign from Tampax encourages women to upgrade their boyfriends, their shoes and, of course, their feminine-hygiene products.

"Tampax has always had a premium product and now we're taking it to the next level to satisfy the needs of our consumer," Canadian spokeswoman Lara Banks says. The company's interactive website features Upgrade U (as in university) in which you can create your own diploma, earning a degree in "biggest flirt" or "extreme cellphone user."

The word appears in a more highbrow context on trendwatching.com, a website that overflows with examples of aesthetic ameliorations. The "Upgrade Anything" section includes plans for redesigned McDonald's restaurants, strollers with leather seats and custom paint jobs and Samsung washing machines with botanical decals.

According to Paul Payack, founder of Global Language Monitor, "upgrade" doubled in usage as far back as 2003 when it transcended tech speak into everyday applications from relationships to ice cream sundaes. Payack's firm makes proprietary software that scans global newspapers and television media for word usage. "It's intense," he says of the hundreds of thousands of citations that "upgrade" gets every year. "Multi-tasking," he adds, is another popular term.

Canadian artist Kelly Jazvac used the adhesive vinyl wrapping common on streetcars and bus shelters to create Upgrade, a work in which a 1998 Pontiac Sunfire stands in for a 2007 Porsche 911 right down to the dashboard.

She says that people's reactions to the piece, which is currently installed at the Toronto Sculpture Garden, have ranged from amusement to bemusement. One woman apparently explained Upgrade to her husband as comparable to a giant fake Louis Vuitton purse.

For Jazvac, it presented an opportunity to explore how upgrades frequently trade on false promises.

"Anything we buy can be pitched as more exciting than it is," she says. "It was important with the car that the upgrade be superficial."

But upgrading also promises to makes life easier. Released just two weeks ago, Gina Trapani's Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better is a self-help book for techies. She notes that co-opting computer metaphors into daily discourse has allowed for a title that is much more accessible than her first book, Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day. "It clearly communicates what the book is about," she says from San Diego.

Then there's Upgrade U, Beyonce's chart-topping single in which she suggests that her guy can transform from street to chic if she supplies some Hermès and Cartier. Note the chorus: "Partner let me upgrade u, Audemars Piguet u/Switch your necktie to purple labels [a Ralph Lauren reference, duh]."

There's no doubt that upgrade speaks to our desire to always want more. Sure, "new and improved" works the same way, but with it comes the implied message that everything else is old and inferior. Upgrade passes no such judgment; it simply works in a positive way. But be mindful, Thompson says. "Once you realize you can't upgrade, not being upgraded is of course seen as inferior."

For a culture that easily suffers from the retail equivalent of attention-deficit disorder, upgrade is loaded with long-term potential. "Most upgrades aren't totally new systems; they're evolutions," notes Alan Middleton, a professor of marketing at the Schulich School of Business at York University. "And to a population that is getting older, that's not a bad motivation for sale because the word gets you to look at something afresh but also says, 'Don't worry, it's not something totally new. You don't have to reload.' "

By definition, an upgrade is fleeting. While Middleton offers "relaunch" as another possible buzzword, upgrade is undeniably sexier. So let it keep its first-class status until the next upgrade comes along.

 

 

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