I think I’ve spoken before in this forum about my childhood wish to go into advertising. How, thanks to ads like Play Station’s 1998 classic pedaling Metal Gear Solid and the Tiny House ad for Geico, I am convinced that the advertising business is full of the coolest, smartest, funniest people in the world. While he may be out to prove my naïve assumptions about his chosen profession null and void, Copyranter manages to do just the opposite: He actually furthers my perception of advertising as that mythical place of hilarious people I decided it was way back in the day.
Allow me to introduce him: “Copyranter” is the pseudonym chosen by the blogger behind the Copyranter blog. A 15-year veteran of the New York City advertising world, two years ago this guy decided to take on the mission of exposing the advertising world as a total sham in which no one knows what the hell they are doing. His blog took off and, as bloggers go, he’s now a virtual celebrity. (I think these peeps are referred to as “blogebrities,” but whatever.)
Anyone with even a passing interest in advertising can see why this guy is such a hit: He takes ads that we see every day and points out both the ridiculous and the sublime (and the ridiculously sublime) that we, as we turn the pages of a magazine or change the channels on the TV, do not often take the time to think about. He’s consumed with advertising in a truly intellectual way and yet he blogs about the business without being pretentious or sanctimonious—he blogs about it in a way that makes me laugh out loud the way no sit-com ever has.
For example, one of my favorite bones he has to pick is with the Ketel One advertising campaign. Just this past week he posted the following Ketel One ad: “Dear Kettle One Drinker [sic] Can you make one hundred words of four letters or more, from the letters in Kettle One Vodka?”
Copyranter’s response: “Dear Ketel One Drinker COLON? Dear Ketel One Drinker COMMA? Dear Ketel One Drinker DASH? Dear Ketel One Drinker ELLIPSIS? How about you nimrods learn how to punctuate your own doodle-brained ads before you invite me (well not me, I don’t drink Ketel One) to play a stupid fucking language game?”
I love this guy. I wish I worked in the cubicle next to him.