Terribly Fowl

As I was lounging away the afternoon at a friend's house this weekend, I flipped though a home improvement magazine that was lying around. Within said magazine, I found this gem:

Brutal.

But the point of this post isn't to show you an awful ad. I'm actually showing this to you because I empathize with the sorry sap that had to make this. With everyone waiting for the account that'll give them the opportunity to create the campaign that'll make them famous, it's always a bummer when your boss tosses you a brief for a product like this instead.

It'd probably be hard to stay sane if all you did was write ad after ad, each one as insipid and uninspiring as the last. I imagine whoever wrote this ad was feeling a bit cheeky and decided to hand this off to proof, thinking it wouldn't even make it past the person sitting over at the next desk. But, to their surprise, the client approved it and it went to print.

That might have been the case, or it could simply just have been a bad ad, written by a bad copywriter. Either way, there's still an attempt at creativity there, however effective or ineffective it is.

When working as a creative, there's a possibility that you won't be doing anything that requires much creativity at all. I think this is something that people should consider, especially when you're about to take your first step into the ad world like my classmates and I will be doing in a couple months. But you have to start somewhere, right?

So, I say do the work of a peon and do it without complaint, but when you get an opportunity to be creative, take advantage of it and create something fun, different and will make people stop and look, no matter how fowl it may be.

Quack.