No, an original idea. Mulatto president is so November ’08.
By December, or at least before The Nazarene’s reelection campaign begins in earnest, America’s unemployment rate will be close to 0%. Inflation will be at historic norms, neither so high as to erode wealth nor so low as to hinder institutional lending. General Motors and Chrysler will enjoy record revenues and profits, befitting the taxpayer charity cases (er, lambent icons of American commerce) they are.
All because of an $800 billion-and-counting government program created by a deviceful White House and a complicit Congress who took action with only seconds to spare, saving us from devolving into a nation of naked people who wear barrels in lieu of clothes and eat sand. (This is not a political rant in progress. It relates to advertising, if indirectly.)
Start by disregarding the efficacy or lack thereof of the stimulus package itself (If it’s such a great idea, why not make it for twice as much? Why not do it weekly? Daily? Does anyone even care that government by definition can never create wealth, it can only take it from some people and redistribute it to others?) One unintended byproduct of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is the plethora of underinspired national ad campaigns created from the unfortunate layman’s name for the Act.
Here’s the first of umpteen campaigns created in its wake, this one courtesy of the sober and restrained people at Trojan.
Isn’t it funny? The narrator refers to “hard times”. Hard, in this case, is a synonym for “erect”. Erect, as in erect penises! To have sex with! Get it?! Here’s a helpful diagram.
On second thought, you’re not getting a diagram. Ask your parents.
TANGENT: Note to Trojan, and its competitors: Use caution, because absolutely everything about your product is a potential punch line. Or at least the following are:
-Obscenely high markups.
-the word itself, starting with the always hilarious “k” sound.
-the conflicting emotions inside the retail purchaser’s head, whipsawing between “Should I hide these in my palm and bring them to the cashier sheepishly, placing them on the counter at the last possible second?” and “Why don’t I just buy the damn things and get it over with? Well, I’ll buy the package along with this beautiful Hanukkah card too. Even though it’s March.”
-the way it’s snuck into the public consciousness as a panacea for everything from reproduction, to HIV, to chlamydia, to feelings of unwarranted intimacy between partners who are thinking it might finally be time to put pleasure ahead of paranoia and go bareback, then think better of it.
-The existence of “regular” and “large” versions, when the latter exist only to assuage the egos of particularly Napoleonic lotharios. (Lotharii? If it isn’t, it ought to be.)
MagicJack got in on the Act act, too. Not to mention Gold’s Gym.
The Baltimore Orioles.
And Carmike Cinemas.
Auto manufacturers, traditionally among the most eager advertisers to take an overused concept and overuse it a little more, are noticeably absent from the stimulus parade. In fact, they’ve been uncharacteristically subdued all around in their recent advertising. Can’t imagine why.
Wait, there’s one more. Valpak, not satisfied with being “America’s largest purveyors of junk mail”, and now opting for the slightly catchier “America’s original stimulus package”.
You get the idea. Then again, you’re probably not a creative director who’s convinced that the first idea that pops into his head must therefore be the best one.
Here’s the seventh verse, not unlike the first.
“Bailout” and “stimulus” might be similar symptoms of the same disease, but regardless of the terms of art used, the net result in the same for viewers – languid catchphrases set to pretty pictures by a lugubrious agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky. (Slamming The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived and The World’s Most Dynamic Agency in one blog post? Why not drown a couple of kittens for good measure?)
Unlike their terrifying Burger King campaigns, at least the above CPB spot is coherent and illustrates the benefit of the product. But as Nicolae Ceaucescu’s bullet-riddled body would have said if it could have talked, shame about the execution.
The first rule of comedy applies to other forms of pervasive communication, too: never go for the obvious joke. Or the obvious reference. Or the obvious news item that’s become an intractable part of popular culture. Even in only its first month or so of existence, “stimulus package” has already passed
“what happens in _________, stays in ________” and is rapidly chasing down
“got ______?” on the career list of overused, overextended and overplagiarized campaigns. Great, we just inadvertently gave the seed of an “idea” to some Madison Avenue hack. Just remember when you eventually do see it – that the “got stimulus?” campaign had its genesis right here on the McFarlaneUSA.com blog. “got stimulus?”. Yeah, that’s Addy gold. Wonder what the product will be.
