When I graduated from college, the recession was on and I’d spent four years at a world renowned university going into debt to learn to be a better writer. Then somebody said hey man, what does that pay? And I said, ah, shit, I forgot about that part, so I got a job as a junior copywriter at a local advertising agency.
It seemed really cool at first because the agency did advertising campaigns for big brands that I presumed would be working with ad agencies in New York or Chicago. I now realize in retrospect what a quaint feeling this was — that I would be somewhat excited that the Bagel Bites brand graced the vendors in yinzer town with advertising budget — but it was genuine. There were also two kegs of beer on the top floor for employees who wanted to improvise happy hours. I got paid next to nothing, but I’d been led to believe that a creative writing degree was worth less than nothing, so in my mental calculus I was coming out on top.
I ended up switching directions to consumer research because copywriting wasn’t for me. That’s the polite way I’ve been coached to describe it by career mentors who reminded me that saying “I hated it” might offend people who enjoy the job. That’s fair. There’s nothing wrong with the job itself. In fact, I think it might be the only job in America where one can earnestly write the funniest things ever written in the English language.
I aspire to write well, and sometimes I even aspire to write humorously. But take a look at this sentence that I saw over the weekend while I was making a lazy lunch for my kids to avoid going out in the cold:
Norm MacDonald once said that the ideal joke he was chasing his whole career — his White Whale as a comedian — was a joke where the setup and punchline were exactly the same. I’m so sad that Norm is dead so that he couldn’t see this sentence. DiGiorno loves regenerative agriculture. It stopped me in my tracks, laughing like a maniac in my kitchen without an audience to enjoy it with (aside from the Fellas Chat).
How does a sentence like this even come into existence? This is where industry experience adds to the flavor of the joke, in my opinion. A brand manager sent a creative brief to an advertising agency because the brand did some research on consumer perception of organic and sustainable agriculture. Based on my work with data, I can guarantee that the research said their target audience (affluent heads of household that do the majority of the grocery shopping) expresses strong preferences for organic foods and those made with ingredients cultivated with sustainable, environmentally friendly methods. In fact, the research probably says that when shopping for groceries, those same consumers (that’s you, by the way) prefer to buy products that make them feel like they are reinforcing their core aspirational values.
After the brief is created and sent along, someone in their early 20s with substance abuse issues sits through 4-5 meetings where “senior people” that make more money say “okay guys how are we going to position this agriculture thing?” Hours are spent discussing this flatly absurd and idiotic concept, wherein human beings are supposed to use their brain power to trick other human beings into believing that DiGiorno — which is just the name slapped on the factory that farts out really bad pizza — gets a thrill out of specific kinds of wheat fields. Then the person in their 20s writes 40 different sentences that say variations of Digiorno gets off on organic produce and the Creative Director picks 3 that they want to say out loud while wearing a blazer.
At no point during the creation of this sentence did anyone believe a word of it. At no point during the creation of this sentence did anyone in the room think they were making history. Yet, here we are staring at a work of satire that is impossible to improve upon. Try as you might, you will never in a million years think of anything as funny as “DiGiorno loves regenerative agriculture.” Just another way the capitalists have already defeated your spirit.
At least we get pizza out of the deal.
