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It could be argued — very well, then, I will argue — that Sony's ad for its Cyber-shot digital camera is just a bit sexist.

I don't have any objection to the ad's high-fashion look and appeal. What I object to is the implied assumption that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. So the female readers to whom the ad is obviously addressed can't be expected to bother their pretty little heads with technical details like the 5.1-megapixel image capture and the Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens with 3X optical zoom — all in a camera body only five-eighths of an inch thick. So much for Inge Morath, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White and other great women photographers celebrated in books and galleries.

But we're talking real money here. In order to “leave an impression” (meaning impress people with how chic you are) you're going to pay close to 500 smackers for the privilege. Meanwhile, you can pick up a Konica Minolta DiMAGE X31 digital camera for less than half the price. It's about as slim but not nearly as good, according to reviewers. But hey, women don't care about these details. They just want a fashionable-looking digital camera they can carry in their pocketbook to impress their friends with, right?

I don't believe that most women who are able and willing to do so will shell out nearly $500 for a cute little camera when they could get a competitor's equally small and cute camera for half the price. I think they'd like to know what they're paying extra for. If their expertise doesn't run to megapixels and optical zoom, then they probably would be inclined to consult a friend, male or female, who does know about such things and would be interested in the technical details provided by the ad.

But for any reader, it would be a struggle to extract such details from this one. The headline, “Take a Picture. Leave an Impression,” is not only a pretty subtle play on words, it could also be said of the lower priced competitor — and doesn't say very much.

Then there's the horrid typography. This month's Maven Award for Virtually Unreadable Copy goes to Sony for the customary tiny white sans-serif letters. Pulling out my trusty Maven Magnifier, here's what I was able to decipher:

“Seductively thin profile, blazingly fast start-up and remarkably engineered with a dazzling 2.5” LCD screen, the T7 is another great innovation from Sony Cyber-shot cameras, digital from day one.

“From the moment you pull out the Sony Cyber-shot T7 digital camera, you'll be turning more than a few heads.”

OK, that's not bad, as far as it goes. But once again the copy direction is better than the art direction, and the two departments don't seem to be on speaking terms. How many pixels can it capture? And does that little lens sunk into the case actually zoom, and by how much? For 500 bucks, milady or her consultant wants to know.

For my makeover, I wanted to keep the fashion look and feel without sacrificing selling details.

So I headlined it “Thin Is In” in very skinny type. I thought it would be appropriate in my headline to reinforce the theme of “thin” with an ultrathin typeface. In the subhead, I managed to convey three sales points without the high-pressure sell. Four, actually, since “smarter” has two meanings, fashionable and brainy. Then I went down to the basement (Sony's Web site) and brought into my copy some of the technical details lying around there. It's important to keep in mind that dry technical specifications can do a selling job even if the reader doesn't understand them.

Another possibility for the copy might have been to quote in its entirety one of several glowing online reviews that Google dredged up for me. That way, the technical details might carry even more weight because someone else would be saying it, not the advertiser.

Finally, I made more of the Sony name because it's a great name. I incorporated it into my headline, as I often do, so the brand name builds the product's reputation and the product's quality builds the brand's reputation.

The original headline also failed to exploit the ad's news value. Some of the strongest words in the advertising lexicography are “new,” “now,” “at last” and “announcing.” So I have incorporated both the news and the brand name in my leading subhead, “The New Sony T7 Cyber-shot.”

Perhaps the makeover copy would have been stronger if I had used boldface lead-offs and bulleted sales points. But such a hard-sell treatment would have detracted from the fashion look which I thought was a valid objective. There's nothing wrong with selling a camera as fashionable as long as you sell the camera.

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THOMAS L. COLLINS (thomas.l.collins@verizon.net) has been a direct marketing copywriter, admaker, agency creative director and co-author of four books on marketing. He is currently an independent creative and marketing consultant based in Portland, OR.