Worst Ad Ever

Perhaps this is not the best foot to start on, but I feel compelled to mention the remarkable ad campaign in the public transit systems in major cities: the posters for “Cupcake in Bloom” advertised by 1-800-FLOWERS. The company has dropped a lot of money in the Bay Area and in Chicago—the ads are all over the place in both regions—and I’ve heard that they have bought out taxi ads in New York as well. Which raises a question: Why? Why put so much money behind an ad campaign that is obviously so poorly executed? A few problems. First, the posters are hideous. The purple background, the bad typography—this is a case study in what not to do in graphic design. Second, the product itself is appalling. It is appalling because it violates what I’ll call the Law of Edible Objects:

1. Any object, no matter how seemingly inedible, may be profitably rendered in cake or candy form. Genitalia, boogers, worms, skulls, robots—it’s all good.
2. The appropriateness of rendering an object in food decreases exponentially as the salt and meat content of the food is increased.
3. Food items composed of non-edible materials are inherently disappointing.

There are some notable exceptions to clause 3, most of them involving naked women, but it remains, nevertheless, a fairly well-established anthropological constant. At any rate, something that appears to be a cupcake but is actually flowers is a clear violation of the third clause of the Law of Edible Objects. Can you honestly imagine yourself, after graduating law school, being overjoyed to receive a mock cupcake made of carnations? It’s like, “Fuck yeah, a giant cupcake. Oh, wait. Damn. This is not a cupcake at all. Umm, I’ll go get some water to put this…thing in.”

Third problem with the ad: Jim McCann looks like a pederast. Every once in a while a corporation benefits from using its actual CEO as its spokesman. Frank Perdue of Perdue’s Chicken and Dave Thomas of Wendy’s are the examples that spring to mind. There is a certain no-game game about such men—they have so little by way of stage presence that they seem earnest and trustworthy. Jim McCann, on the other hand, looks like he molests children. The sexless features, the stubble, the store-bought teeth, the uncle-Jim’s-got-a-surprise-in-the-car grin. I know that phrenology and the related sciences are out, but I also feel that, by sixty, everyone’s got the face they deserve. And McCann has, as Brian Posehn so memorably puts it, “a rapey face.”

So, an extremely well-funded ad campaign for a laughably bad product that is funded by a sex pervert and designed by a color-blind art-school dropout. A charming reminder that no one is steering the ship over at corporate America, or a sign that the Rapture is imminent? Take your pick.

The Interesting Narrative of Pink Man

I can’t think of a better way to start this as yet directionless blog than with a link to the SF Weekly‘s cover story on Pink Man. I literally mean I can’t think of anything better. But, in any case, this is the kind of true life personal narrative that I wish I had thought up myself as a novel.