"still working and too tired to write elegant German"
Understand completely - don't know how many times I've burned the midnight oil.
"works very effectively in the US"
- Don't dispute that at all. I've just noticed a pattern here when it comes to German marketing messages (be it food, IT, cars, or something else). They are getting more "direct," but in my opinion, German and US marketing documents are still miles apart in how they address customers.
"maybe the German culture has gone off the deep end"
- Be glad you don't have to watch TV ads over here. We're lucky enough to be able to record our TV shows, so we can skip those ads altogether. Advertising used to be such a "cute" business:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUONMB9N1Uk"Don't know what the Seitenhieb refers to... if that's another criticism"
- No, it wasn't. That was my comment to Usch's answer. The fact that the name isn't
understood by anyone other than the people cooking up the compound in a lab was an allusion to how consumers use these barcode-checking sites in Germany to figure out what they actually put on their skin. That's why I thought it was a good solution.
Best wishes + good luck with your work!