From the "Seemed like a good idea at the time" file

I saw this logo/tag on the side of a SW van this morning. Considering BP’s recent peccadOILlo, I’m surprised this wasn't sandblasted off the company fleet posthaste.

Out of the goodness of my heart, I am offering some alternative taglines they might consider should they choose to rebrand.

• Kill the otters
• Pump latex into the ocean
• Shove a ballgag in Mother Nature’s mouth
• Paint some fish gills closed
• Categorically eradicate all known flora and fauna
• Scumble the environment

Portmanteauing the line

Yep. Apparently all food marketers are now REQUIRED to use the portmanteau in their copy. It's built into the creative brief under "executional mandatories."

Incidentally, Mad Props to Mad Men for showing us that the portmanteau was crap creative even back in the '60s. "Bacardilicious." "Bacardilightful."Don Draper would've shit a brick if they gave him that crap.

GET IT?

I wrote this headline and then billed the client 72.5 hours.

Even at Lolla...

Snacklish managed to infiltrate my 3-day music paradise. Boo Snickers. Boo.

And so it has come to this

I used to really love the playfulness of a portmanteau.

Smog

Galumph

Spork

Good innocent, clean fun. But then society had to go and put the man in portmanteau, and things got a bit precious.

Murse

Metrosexual

Bromance

And then Snickers came and gang raped the portmanteau in its eye socket. Ahem. Sorry for the visual there. But, I mean, look at these.  

Patrick Chewing

Nougatocity

Master P-Nut

Chewmute

Seriously?

"Hey dude, why you eating a snickers on the bus?" "Cuz, man. This is my chewmute."

Fuuuuuuck.

And now it has come to this. Beans. Yes, beans, ladies and gentleman, have taken on the yoke of portmanteauification. Here are some more suggestions for their campaign.

Crappetizing

Scramptious

Shityourpantilizing

Do you have any good suggestions? Share them in comments! 

Factose intolerant part deux

So, I’m flipping through another cooking magazine, and lo and behold, there’s another ad teaching me about the relative non-dangers of high fructose corn syrup.

Thank you, Corn Refiners Association, thank you.

Let’s take a look at the facts clinging to the side of that pudding cup, shall we?

Fact: Your dry cleaner doesn’t know shit about shit.

Fact: Kevin totally caught a typo in that last fact, sew eye fixed it.

Fact: High fructose corn syrup is simply a kind of corn sugar.

Fact: Corn sugar is harvested from the teat of a virgin unicorn.

Fact: Virgin unicorns are more common than you might think.

Fact: Did your dry cleaner even go to school?

Fact: High fructose corn syrup has no artificial ingredients.

Fact: AI: Artificial Ingredients was a movie starring Haley Joel Osmont.

Fact: Haley Joel Osmont is a virgin unicorn.

Fact: All sugars should be enjoyed in moderation.

Fact: That does not include the sugars contained in this blog.

Fact: Or in cocaine. Go nuts with that stuff.

Fact: “You’re in for a sweet surprise” was not the tagline of Ginger Dead Man.

Fact: Ginger Dead Man did not star Haley Joel Osmont. 

Fact: That would have been sweet if it did.

Fact: By sweet, I mean, a totally natural, low-cal sweet.

Fact: Your dry cleaner’s a dick.

Your cleft sentence is showing

In 1989, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. They promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Las Vegas underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as strippers of fortune. If you have a wad of cash, if no one else can help get you off, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team. To show you their boobies.

But whatever you do, don’t hire them to copyedit your term paper.

“…for find out we’re up to”

Are you serious? I expect my strippers to at least have a minor grasp of grammar. Otherwise, how will they know when they have their period? How will they know what to do with a dangling participle? Will they even be able to master top-down language learning?

I bet if you actually text ATEAM to 89074, your follow-up text would be:

“I want for find out your up to.  Let know. You dollar on skirt and panty.”

Lifestyles of the rich and constipated

Apologies for the crappy photo. Teehee.

Anyways, I've put together a brief questionnaire to help you determine your place on the poopability meter.

Ahem. Which of the following applies to you?

1. I can’t poop because cheese is a big part of my lifestyle.

2. I can’t poop because of some pills I’m taking.

3. I can’t poop and it really frickin’ hurts.

4. I can’t poop because I have a medical condition beyond my inability to poop.

5. I can’t poop because I have a medical condition that requires me to take pills wrapped in cheese and it really frickin’ hurts.

6. I can poop.

Stick some pork in me, I'm done.

I am a big fan of all-copy ads that feature nothing more than a quick headline alongside a logo, or a product, or simply the brand colors. Like the Tide campaign from several years ago (eg, Escape from Thousand Island).

Of course, if the line isn’t terribly inspired or clever or short, then you wind up with the Snickers campaign. Oops, wrong crappy ads. I meant the Snickers campaign. Shit, dammit. I mean, it’s really bad. But now I’m actually talking about… Lloyd’s Barbeque.

Before I get to the rather tepid headlines, I just first have to point out the body copy, which, to Lloyd’s credit, is nice and concise. Bravo. Too bad the sentence is:

“Ready to heat and eat right out of your grocer’s refrigerated meat case.”

Aside from the vaguely Dahmeresque aura surrounding that sentence, it seems like they’re omitting an important step: bringing the meat home and putting it in your refrigerator. Did they want us to just pocket-nuke the meat on the spot and eat it at the store? Were they afraid we wouldn’t know to look for it at our grocer’s? Did they just really want to say “meat case?”

Anyway, to the headline. “Feeds five. Unless we’re talking teenagers.”

Methinks they forgot to add “nyuk nyuk nyuk.” In fact, if they could do an insert, with an elbow that pops out of the magazine and pokes you in the ribs, that’d be even better. It’s a good joke though, because of the truth at its essence: Everybody knows teenagers eat tons of bucket meat.

Other lines in the campaign include:

“Makes five hearty sandwiches. That’s four for you, one for someone else."

Get it? Cuz after you’re done chugging your third helping of high fructose corn syrup, you’ll still be peckish. So you’ll cram four chubby fistfuls of freshly disinterred meat into your piehole, and your wife and kids can fight to the death for that last sandwich.

“My recipe for perfect BBQ: First heat, then eat.”

Delicious sounding, right? I mean, Lloyd knows it’s hard to resist thrusting some gelatinized pork byproduct directly from a plastic tub into your slavering maw. But if you’d just be patient for, say, 45 seconds of microwavey goodness, then that meat will glisten with sweat like Richard Simmons’ dayglo orange cankles.

In retrospect, Lloyd has definitely covered gluttony and sloth. I’m looking forward to his fresh take on lust and wrath.

Bonus joke: If you eat a bunch of this stuff, and then at night, when you’re trying to sleep, but you can’t, because you’re lying in your own bucket-pork-induced flop sweat, you can sing to yourself softly, in your best Phil Collins voice: “I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lloyd, oh Lloyd. And I’ve been waiting for this moment since haaaalf past fiiive, oh Lloyd, oh Lloyd…”

Hey-o! How’s your bucket pork this evening?!

Factose intolerant

Think high fructose corn syrup is bad for you? No, you being a fat pig is bad for you! 

See, I was flipping through this magazine, and I found this wonderful PSA paid for by the…um…Corn Refiners Association. Well okay! I mean, the corn is refined, right? Let’s see what kind of facts we can dredge up from the bottom of the cereal bowl.

Fact: High fructose corn syrup is natural.

Fact: So is staphylococcus aureus.

Fact: Staphylococcus aureus can cause bumblefoot in birds of prey.

Fact: High fructose corn syrup has not yet been proven to cause bumblefoot.

Fact: High fructose corn syrup is nutritionally the same as table sugar.

Fact: Table sugar has never been linked to diabetes, acne, insomnia, cavities, or AIDS.

Fact: High fructose corn syrup has the same number of calories as table sugar.

Fact: Obesity just means there’s more of you to love.

Fact: High fructose corn syrup should be enjoyed in moderation.

Fact: It is impossible to truly enjoy anything in moderation.

Fact: There is high fructose corn syrup in almost everything, including this blog.

Fact: High fructose corn syrup can’t be all that bad.

Fact: That last fact was paid for by the Corn Refiners Association.

Fact: Bumblefoot.

Orange fingers flash the devil's horns

Thanks to my friend Drew, who, um, “drew” my attention to this. It’s a homonym. Neat, huh?

Kids these days. They just have to have their snacks. And they want their snacks to be compartmentalized temporally, okay? Like, nacho cheese is so noon, you know? So what does Doritos do? They give the kids what they want, man, with Doritos Late Night, available in rule-breaking flavors like Tacos at Midnight and Last Call Jalapeno Popper.

But they didn’t stop there. Because kids these days are too cool to go see a real live concert, Doritos found a way to bring the concert to the kids. See, select Doritos Late Night bags serve as tickets to a 3d virtual concert by Blink 182. You go to a special Web site, aim the bag at a web cam on your computer, and then the concert starts. By popping out of your bag. It’s a 3d bag-concert. Kind of like Princess Leia popping out of R2D2, only it’s some guys wearing eyeliner. Yep. Oh, also, if you don’t like the performance you can change it by shaking or crinkling the bag. Oh, also, I want to kill myself.

It dawns on me now that they missed an opportunity by not hosting a bag-concert by Shakira. She could sing “Chips don’t lie.” Jesus, am I on fire.

So next time you’re sequestered in a room with nothing but a webcam and a bag of Passed Out In My Own Vomit Quesadilla, you know what to do. Smear some pasty, spitty orange residue all over your keyboard, log on, aim the fucking bag of chips at your web cam, and get ready to rock. Just like the old days, man!

An unlikely pairing

A Motocross dude launches into the air in an explosion of euphoric, Technicolor starbursts. What is the soundtrack to this colorful stunt?

Based on standard X Games fare, my guess would be something atonal by Staind or Disturbd or Retardd.

Nope. It’s Woof Woof by Dan Deacon, one of the most hyperactive, vocoded, raptastical (i.e., best) songs of the year.

And somehow, it all works really nicely together.

I still won’t be watching the X Games though.

(Note to self, get off your ass and figure out how to embed video on this damn blog.)

Meditate on this

Don't freak. But Jennifer Aniston is looking at me. Right at me. And she’s smiling. And possibly naked. This might get good. 

Then I realize I’m standing at a bus stop in the land that summer forgot, and Jennifer Aniston just wants me to buy some smartwater, whatever the hell that is.

I’m no Buddhist, but here’s a koan for you: If there is no peace in purity, but there is such a thing as pure Zen, which apparently comes in the form of a bottle of overpriced tap water hawked by a doe-eyed tabloid luminary, then what is the sound of one hand flipping this ad the bird?

Also, does anyone else get thrown by “Yeah every bottle comes with that” as a close? Such an oddly colloquial wisecrack for a product that proposes to be as pure as Jennifer Aniston’s pallid soul.

Viagra ad

A few things pop up in this ad, so to speak...

1. Meta-advertising. Maybe next they should have a billboard featuring their Web site, their Web site featuring their direct mail to physicians, and their direct mail featuring this magazine ad. It'd be an infinity mirror of boner med advertising.

2. Fake billboards with twenty words rock.

3. Fake billboards with twenty words AND asterisks totally rock.

4. Fake billboards with twenty words AND asterisks that are footnoted on a printed page below four paragraphs of side effects sort of suck.

5. Is the guy in this picture smiling cuz he just got laid? Or because he's about to? Or because we don't see the woman's hands? Or maybe, geez, the backstory could be that this guy doesn't NEED Viagra and that's why he's smiling, cuz he's like "14 minutes? Shit, I can be finished and watching Sportscenter in 10."

A Question for Art Directors

Okay. So, I'm concerned that I'm missing something here. Is the headline "Great taste is timeless?" Or am I completely missing some double entendre? Cuz I'm kind of freaking out over this hyphen. 

My question for ADs is: Given that the headline is indeed "Great taste is timeless," would you have designed your ad in such a way that you were required to add a hyphen?

Again: am I being obtuse here? Am I missing something?

Eco Lofts

How can you help the environment?

- Recycle

- Add a low-flow faucet aerator

- Recharge batteries

- Replace shower masturbation with shower threesomes to conserve water

- Use fluorescent light bulbs instead of incandescents

The contents of my tackle box

• Needle nose pliers

• Folding knife

• Hooks

• Sinkers

• Bobbers

• Golden hued cluster of deep fried lard

• Live bait

And lest I forget the subhead, if one were to be in the unenviable position to take "one bite" from the ((shudder)) tackle box, then wouldn't one already have been sufficiently "lured?" Does not the copywriter intend to say "hooked?" Or would that be cliche? Yes, yes, that would be cliche. Better to be woefully inaccurate. And to represent one's food as a luring device, not unlike, say, worms.

My pie-hole itches

I commend Pace for putting the oddly hyphenated, yet mildly attention getting "pie-hole" into a headline. 

I just wish they would have taken it to its logical conclusion: Fire in the ass-hole.

Nothing says security like a bank using baseball metaphors.

So, National City, I sure hope your batting average is better than Milton Bradley's. Hey-ooo! 

But seriously, folks. Can't you just imagine the copywriter who came up with this one. "So, I'm trawlin' Getty for inspiration, and I find this baseball, I mean, dramatically cropped and everything, and I think, ball...ball...ball...BAT! Free associatin' like motherfuckin' Freud. Then for the CTA I'm all like gotta get somethin' in there like 'money bunt' or 'dollar sacrifice fly' and make sure the designer fucking italicizes it so that no one can miss my unprecedented conflation of sport and finance. Gettin' all Don Draper up in the hizzy."

Not all headlines are created equal