Legalese: Toughbook Ads' Unfine Print

I HOP THE METRO each day at Capitol South, which means I'm usually confronted with ads aimed at Congress. They often plug a full spectrum of issues and products — except when the whole station is bought out by a single advertiser. Which it is now.

For more than a month, every inch of Capitol South ad space has been used to flog Panasonic's Toughbook series of laptop computers — the ones that you can allegedly smack, drop, puree and blowtorch, all while giving a flawless Powerpoint presentation. All of the ads come from the same campaign, one that won the Sigma ad agency a batch of awards and one that, at first glance, I thought was pretty clever.

"Legally," trumpets heavy text above a heroic-looking pic of the laptop, "we cannot say there's one in the White House." Says another: "Legally, we cannot say it was designed by the DOD." Still another: "Legally, we cannot say we own the word 'tough.'"

See? The ads make claims the company can't back up — but they don't have to, because the ads say they can't back them up! They're little slices of postmodernist genius!

Those, however, are the good ones. A closer inspection revealed that they have some less-than-stellar brethren. For example:

"Legally, we cannot say you can run a country with it."

Sure, that's a big claim, but not a totally unreasonable one. I could see running some countries off a laptop. Like France.

"Legally, we cannot say it can take a bullet."

Well, that just seems lazy. I mean, you can run tests and stuff. Shoot one of 'em? See what happens?

"Legally, we cannot say you can knock it against this pillar."

Huh? So, TV commercials show it getting slammed and smacked and tossed around, but a little bump against a Metro station pillar could do it in?

And when you think about it, what kind of tough guy worries about what he can legally do? Does Batman watch his step around Gotham because he can't legally hunt down criminals? Did John Wayne or Clint Eastwood hold back on Wild West gunslingers out of fear they'd run afoul of the law?

Maybe that's the drawback of plastering a station with ads — it gives analytical types waiting five minutes a day for their train toward Vienna time to deconstruct your message. Or to see those bits of your campaign that aren't quite as strong as the rest.

So, are the Toughbook's big, burly, award-winning ads not so tough? I can't say that. Legally.