DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER LAUGHTER?*
DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER LAUGHTER?*
Advertising is on a stairway down to unfunny Hell.
*RE the headline: Robert Plant ad-libbed the quip (after “…and the forests will echo with laughter”) during a performance of “Stairway To Heaven” recorded at Madison Square Garden in 1973 for the concert movie The Song Remains The Same. Plant is still embarrassed by it.
I am, also, somewhat embarrassed by this clumsy sequitur to how utterly humorless ad “creativity” has become. Oh, there are still attempts at making funny ads. But these attempts almost universally suck sweaty sacks.
A big reason for this is that brands/agencies focus on making “ad-dy” jokes instead of just being smartly funny. An example that comes to mind is all the Progressive “Flo” commercials. They flow alright: like sewage.
Name an ad, any recent ad, that has made you truly laugh out loud. There is now such a pathetic pandering to the lowest common denominator with ad humor. It makes me ill. It really does.
WHAT THE FUCK are you doing, creatives? Or, is it your CDs? Or, the clients? It’s all three of yous, I know. I’ve seen it.
And: you only have to go back to the 1990s to find a glut of actual humorous ads. Not that I’m blaming any specific generation for the death of advertising laughter. No, not at all. Not me. I’d never…
Somewhere in there, y’all forgot that the best ads—the most recalled, the most persuasive, most successful ads—entertain. And in 2024, we are not being entertained, young creative gladiators.
So buy a subscription, and be entertained.