ON CRAPPY COPYWRITING (Continued)

If you're going to try to be "clever", make sure you're actually being clever.

It’s the most disingenuous time of the year, when you swear this is the year I “get in shape”. You just watched the Super Bowl, Memorial Day is more than three months away, and you’ve got some new sharp-looking sweat clothes and a bangin’ playlist.

And every gym chain with an ad budget is spending most of it targeting YOU. Some use O-Face. Gold’s mocks Fatties. Equinox sez it’s Life and Death. Some, sometimes, even get it mostly right.

(Yep, it’s another free article, because I like each and every one of you. But if you buy a subscription, I will send you a personal post-Valentine’s Day love note, cross my heart. Click below.)

Then there’s this new campaign for London chain Gym Box (ad agency: AMV BBDO). I’ll let a portion of the 220+-word press note try to explain this crap first:

(We) follow(ed) a brief to disrupt (oy) the category and reinforce (Gym Box’s) brand position as the “antidote to boring gyms” (by) respond(ing) with (our) take on fitness quotes (that) cut through the nonsense and motivational commandments and positions them as the lively alternative to the serious approach of many big gym chains (…) (Our) work builds on the existing Gymbox “Anything goes” campaign using the same endline. The new out-of-home creative mimics graffiti, with cliché motivational quotes about working out scribbled over and phrases that sum up the Gymbox fun and bold spirit.

“Mimics graffiti”? Yeah-Nah. And judging by the hot-pink not-graffiti, the campaign is unsubtly targeting women only.

Yes, it’s the old “cross out fake headlines and write snappy responses” approach, which has been done and overdone over the years. Except here, the responses ain’t at all snappy. The above one is just fucking depressing and makes me want to lift, not weights, but a bottle.

And here, the taped-over headline isn’t cancelled by the stupid response, it’s actually still the headline of the ad. The taping-over is pointless.

L—Thee Olde anti-sell. Well, I’m sure London therapists are happy with this poster, maybe they helped pay for it. R—Yes that’s it—my browser history. What a knee-slapper, my sides, that’s just sooooo funny.

Great approach: mock me and my lack of discipline, douchebags. Where do I fucking sign?

Last Note: ANYTHING GOES is one of the most generically awful taglines I’ve ever seen—for a gym or any brand. Y’all should be ashamed, AMV BBDO, for this shit-awful work.

PREVIOUSLY: ON CRAPPY COPYWRITING.