Dictionary Ads Get Personal

The scribbled note on a yellow pad sent Rick Mailly through the roof: “Wanted,” it read. “Long-term relationship thru college and beyond. Am resourceful and well-defined with good karma. Here 4 U 24 hrs. a day, fulfilling your every need. Meet me in the campus bookstore. I’ll be in a blue and yellow striped jacket.”

Mailly confronted his wife, Sandy Goroff-Mailly. Just what was she up to now?

Goroff-Mailly, special-projects and promotions manager for Houghton Mifflin, hastily explained that the copy was part of a new campaign for the American Heritage College Dictionary, Third Edition. (“Blue and yellow striped jacket, Honey. Get it?”) The series of four “personal” ads are appearing in newspapers and as whispery radio spots in key college markets--such as the Daily Bruin and KLA radio at UCLA, and the Daily Trojan and KSCR radio at USC.

Determined to plug the dictionary with the kind of ingenuity usually reserved for bestsellers, Goroff-Mailly and staff released a rap song in honor of the Third Edition. They flashed electronic ads on the scoreboard at Fenway Park, just a dictionary’s throw from Boston University, and arranged for the new volume to be featured as “the reference book of choice” in the upcoming Jack Nicholson-Michelle Pfeiffer movie, “Wolf.”