Top 5 Things a Copywriter Never Wants to Hear

5. "We love these concepts. Let's combine them."

4. "We need to get approval on this ad from our committee."

3. "Our marketing guy wrote the first draft. We just need you to touch it up."

2. "I need some quick copy."

1. "We're going to have to pass on your novel."

Add your own. It's a free country.


M.M.McDermott, Copywriter/ACD

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Friday Ad Haiku: Conference Calls

Half a dozen people talking over one another, paying half-attention to the conversation while playing solitaire or reading the paper (or doodling), and wearing out the mute button to talk trash about the people on the other end.

I'd rather have a meeting under water than over the phone.



Is Joe on the phone?
Hello? What did you say, Steve?
You hung up on Bill.



Previously in the Friday 5-7-5: User-Generated Content


M.M.McDermott, ACD/Copywriter/Communicator

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Coal in your crawl and the Intern Sweatshop churns out a new one

From Producer Noah, our lovable plant-murdering, bongo-beating, Orlando Bloom stunt double on the other side of the building: a great spoof on the "benefits" of coal power.



The lung cancer lets you know it's working!

and...

Threatened with bodily harm and tattle-taling to her college advisor, Intern Julie has no choice but to submit to the whims of the Intern Sweatshop:

A Niche Fido Won’t Itch

With the U.S. bottled water industry swimming in yearly revenues of more than $10.8 billion, there is clearly a demand for the purified potion. Consumers have found themselves turning off their faucets and turning up their noses to the thought of drinking tap water.

Companies like Pepsi and Glaceau are diving into this trend by flooding the market with enhanced, vitamin infused, flavored water, so they can ride this bottled water wave for as long as possible.

Marketers are grabbing stars like 50 cent to pimp their products as spokesmen. Even supermodel, Naomi Campbell, has taken a break from giving her housekeepers a few light slams and appeared in a SoBe Life Water commercial. She teamed with a choreographed squad of lizards and danced to Michael Jackson’s Thriller in an ad that appeared during the much-anticipated commercial breaks for 2008 Super Bowl.
Even though some of these enhanced waters are pumped with sugar and calories, consumers are still drinking it up. I even found myself buying a bottle of the pomegranate-spiked stuff, thinking all those additional “nutrients” would somehow cure my Saturday morning hangover.

This H2O craze is spilling over into the pet market, targeting those four-legged mutts who typically rely on the toilet bowl for their hydration fix. Last month, Cott Corp., in its attempt to be the first to get into this niche, introduced Fortifido-bottled water in flavors like parsley and peanut butter. Will Fido really prefer the manufactured nutty taste over his own—and can we really trust the palate of an animal that regularly has its head buried in its backside?

Just what makes marketers think dogs, who turn tricks for pig ears and marrow bones, will lap up the minty refreshment just as their owners do with Vitamin Water? From the perspective of a college kid whose been taught that history repeats itself, I’m skeptical; flavored pooch water didn’t work in 1994 with Thirsty Dog! water, and it probably won’t make too many tails wag today. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if this new water follows its predecessor down the drain.


Julie Leitch, Intern

Previously extracted from the Intern Sweatshop: Starbucks takes a coffee break.

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6 Thoughts About a Very Strange Commercial

1. I wish I spoke Japanese, because I really want to know what’s going on here. Then again, I’m afraid they might tell me to kill my parents.
2. I am now afraid of dogs.
3. I am now afraid of potato chips.
4. Different strokes for different folks.

I know what I find funny. I’ve loved stand-up ever since I saw Bill Cosby Himself. I thought about it as a career until I realized how much work it actually was. I still think Bill Cosby Himself is hysterical. But I also found Mitch Hedberg hysterical. I appreciate the brilliance of Gallagher, who most people only remember for the Sledgomatic, and the brilliant annoyance of Gilbert Godfried. I can laugh at the outlandishness, as well as the subtlety of The Office, and the silliness of Anchorman and Monty Python, along with the ingeniously stupid character Stephen Colbert has created for himself. Even stupid comedy—especially stupid comedy—needs to be well thought-out to work.

I also know what I don’t find remotely funny: Two and a Half Men, Carlos Mencia, Scary Movie and the similar Friedberg/Seltzer spoofs they’ve spawned.

But Gallagher is a now a comedic afterthought. Two and a Half Men is consistently one of the highest rated sit-coms on TV. And Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer movies have made a lot of money.

What are you driving at Cap’n? Well I watched this video again after watching Queen Latifah in Last Holiday. It’s a movie I never would have bothered with, but it was what they were showing at jury duty. The movie was what I expected to be, but regardless, I laughed. At parts I cackled. And many other jurors in waiting howled at predictable jokes I’d finished writing in my head halfway before the character onscreen ever got them out.

It reminded me that just because something doesn’t fit my model of good comedy doesn’t mean there’s not a huge audience for it. As westerners, we may not get this commercial. But in the West, the silly antics of shows such as MXC and Ninja Warrior were always left to the realm of children on Double Dare. Still, they’re quite popular on the other side of the globe. And compare the original British The Office to the American The Office. The setting is the same, but they are very different shows. And even think North and South. East Coast and West Coast. What plays in Augusta, Maine may not be nearly as effective in Augusta, Georgia.

The bottom line is, think about your audience. If they’re affluent and well-educated, you may have to up your level of sophistication. Conversely, kicks to the groin and pies in the face have been longtime comedy favorites that probably won’t be going away anytime soon.

5. I want a potato chip.

6. My parents have been getting on my nerves lately.

--Captain Awesome, Project Specialist

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In Memorium, The Wire (2002-2008)

"Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own."

H. L. Mencken

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Friday Ad Haiku: User-Generated Commercials

So I got a call from my dad the other day. He tipped me off to the online spots Gibson is running for the Robot Guitar, their new self-tuning guitar. At $2,500, this robified gee-tar does everything but play itself, and by "everything" I mean that its buttons glow and the tuning knobs on the head turn by themselves. It's kind of like the KITT of electric guitars, only with better dialogue.

The ads are pretty funny. I particularly enjoy the fact that, in half the spots, our protagonist is playing or humming "Smoke on the Water". Next to "Stairway to Heaven" it's probably the most likely song to drive a guy working in a guitar shop to the bell tower with a sniper rifle.


I asked my dad if he was going to pick one of these babies up for himself; he was less than enthusiastic about it. Truth be told, my dad is to axe-thrashing what Chuck Norris is to ass-kicking. Giving him a guitar that tunes itself would be like giving Ron Jeremy the Kama Sutra. You just don't do it.

Anyway, part of Gibson's campaign included the popular, and increasingly irritating, trend of inviting folks to submit their own commercials. Predictably, the ones I saw online, including the winner, gave me the runs. You can guarantee that any user-generated ad promotion will include no less than 90% MasterCard rip-offs, give or take; it's the ad guy's equivalent of "Stairway to Heaven".

Making your own spot?
Hit yourself in the face with
a phone book: Priceless.

Previously in the Friday 5-7-5: Microsoft Vista pounds sand.

M.M. McDermott, ACD/Copywriter/Self-Tuning

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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Advertisement

Above, ads created for Harley-Davidson by Carmichael Lynch out of Minneapolis: very choice, top notch creative in my opinion. A bold presentation of the sense of individuality that's a trademark of the Harley-Davidson brand. See the individual in the motorcycle.

The time and care that was clearly invested in creating these images, and the method employed, reminds me of another art form. Tibetan sand painting.
In case you're unfamiliar, Zen monks spend hours upon hours intricately pouring colored sands onto the ground to create beautiful imagery. Upon completion, the doors to the temple are flung open and the wind erases the images forever. It's an exercise of patience and humility, a downplaying of the ego and a strong demonstration of the impermanence of all things.
I'll grant that you'd be hard pressed to have a crankshaft assembly delicately float away on the breath of impermanence, but you can see the similarity nonetheless. Once all those motorcycle parts have been cleaned up, installed, and driven off to have half-naked, drunken motorcycle groupies cavort on them at rock concerts and biker rallies, the original assemblage image is gone. Yes, unlike the sand paintings, we have a photograph to remember it, but that brings me to my ultimate point.

The Harley ads are just one small part of a huge body of creative work our industry generates on a regular basis, work that, while permanent in form, is just as ephemeral in long term viewership as our monks' sand creations.

It's inevitable. Every great billboard, TV spot or print ad is eventually replaced. And this process repeats again and again, ad infinitum (no pun intended). With media consumption growing exponentially, this turnover will occur at an ever accelerating pace in the future. So we, as creatives, deliver painstakingly developed, beautifully rendered, multi-faceted campaigns to our clients, and in a month the winds of consumption blow them into obscurity.

Surprisingly, I'm not complaining. There's something wonderful behind sand paintings. They say, "Release your attachments and just let beauty be. Yes, you created something glorious, but who are you? What does your minor achievement mean against the backdrop of a universe so staggeringly big it's impossible to imagine it? Your work is beautiful, and now it's gone."

I originally intended this article to be something of a rant against the mad rush to replace. But the more I write, the more I'm changing my mind. Ultimately, I think it's a very healthy way to think about what we do. We're not Van Gogh or Da Vinci, creating work that will last for centuries (and one could argue that, on a cosmic time scale, even their work is fleeting). We create for the Now. And we have the opportunity to keep doing it over and over again. So I say, fling open the doors, wipe the slate clean, and get to work!

Jason Bloom, Senior Avid Editor

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