We Were Only Kidding

MEMO
To:          The Ad Industry
From:     Phi Theta Gamma
Subject:  Only Kidding
Date:       March 28, 2011

Okay. We're sorry. We were just kidding.

We know we may have confused some people. And some of you may have actually blown some money, but we really didn't mean any harm. We just thought of it as a stupid joke.

Honestly, we really didn't imagine anyone would take this stuff seriously. It was just, like, one night we were sitting around the fraternity house studying for a dumb-ass marketing final and smoking a j and Larry said, dude, this stuff is such bullshit, let's just, like, invent our own marketing bullshit.

And so we start riffing, like "marketing is a dance contest"...no..."marketing is a cheese slicer"...no..."marketing is a conversation"...and we all kinda cracked up. It sounded like the kind of crap marketers would say. I mean, a conversation? With marketers? Who would do that? Ever talk to a marketer?  Fucking morons.

So now we're thinking we're on a roll and Vic says, let's do some bs about "brands" because, you know, they're always going on and on about brand this and brand that.... So how do we get brands into this bullshit deal? So Chris says -- this one killed us -- what if we say "consumers want to have a relationship with brands?" Now we're peeing our pants.

Yeah, says, Vic, I want to have a relationship with my mayonnaise, and Chris says, I want to have a relationship with my clock radio, and I say, I want to have a relationship with my toilet paper.

Now we're on the floor.

So then Jimmy says, dude, all these marketing guys are totally queer for tech. Let's invent some tech bullshit thing that's going to replace TV ads. So we blazed another spliff. Okay, says Ian, how about podcasts...no, that's dead...how about widgets...no, dead....Eddie says, you know that pathetic Twitter thing that all the old geezers do? What if we say nobody needs to do TV ads anymore because all you have to do is send out tweeters, or whatever they call that shit. So now Vic can't breathe he's laughing so hard.

So here's where it gets weird. The next thing you know, all these companies are having interns sitting around tweetering to their customers and thinking that this is going to save them millions because they won't have to pay Tiger Woods or some other dipshit to be in their stupid TV spots. Then they're having, like, webinars and conferences and people are writing books and guys who couldn't deliver pizzas are making speeches and writing blogs...

Anyway, you know the rest of the story... we were too stoned to realize that Jake the jack-off was recording the whole thing, and his ugly-ass ex-girlfriend Wendy found it on his iPhone and uploaded it to YouTube. So now everyone in the frickin universe knows that all this new age marketing shit we invented was just a big goof, and the Dean is all up our ass and my father is super-pissed and...

Well, anyway, we're sorry. But it was kinda fun.