At any job, there are good days and bad days. At Absolute Marketing Group, the vast majority of my days are awesome. I mean awesome as in I’m full of awe. I’m constantly blown away by the array of industries we serve, the media we deliver and the willingness of our clients to go along with the crazy ideas we throw at them.
At the moments when the pressure gets overwhelming, all I have to do is look through a Harriet Cartier catalog to remind myself I have it pretty darn good. Some products should never have been invented. It’s somebody’s job out there to sell these abominations. It’s probably cruel to find comfort in the marketing misery of others, but it helps keep everything in perspective.
Recently, there was a situation when the tension of this gig started to tug at the seams of my sanity. The client was pretty dear to me and everyone on staff got a little too emotionally invested and attached to their own idea. As I sat in front of my TV trying to compress McLuhan philosophy with Andy Warhol imagery and write with the social angst of Billy Armstrong, I hit a breaking point. Only the mind-numbing hum of the set kept me from going Wolverine berserker style on my living room furniture.
Then I saw it. The reason why I started this whole series. It was an ad for one of the worst products anyone could sell. It then dawned on me that nothing we pitch here will ever be more difficult or less rewarding.
Here it is in all of it’s glory.
The worst day of a copywriter’s life.
Here I was stewing in my own creative funk because I couldn’t unravel the metaphysics of a billboard when I had zero reason to be discouraged. Compared to this heinous (and dare I say racist) product, no one in this biz has it that bad off. Can you imagine trying to write the infomercial for this? How did the creative pitch go?
“And as you can see in this panel, the stock animated GIF of a waving flag really helps embody what this product is all about; environmentalism, patriotism and growth – health, manageable, luscious, growth. And no, Mr. Client, we don’t think this is racist.”
“Yes we can” doesn’t me we should.