I know a man in this business who people tell me is very, very funny. First thing in the morning before the caffeine has reached most of our nervous systems, this man is funny. Tell this man that you have just ended a marriage of 20 years and may require hospitalization, and this man will find some humor in your grief. For this man, all the world is a stage at Yuk Yuk’s and he at least is playing his part.

Get a gag

I think about this man now as I look over the last year in television advertising. The year 1993/94 appears to be the year of the gag. Got furniture to sell? Get a gag. Share of beer market drifting a tad south? Get a gag. The ‘gag,’ it would seem, is omnipotent. It would appear that a well-placed Henny Youngman can cure just about anything from share erosion to poor distribution.

As someone who has attained no higher than his blue belt in the art of gagging, this present trend is more than a little disturbing. I can envision a time in which a dependable second income will consist of renting your wiener dog out for television commercials, or more lucrative still, your grandparents for coffee tables.

Those of us for whom the gag does not come easily will be shuttled off to some Siberian-like outpost, forced to eke out a meager existence writing infomercials for funeral chapels or cancer treatment clinics, miles away from the cities where the real work is being done.

Curse our parents

We will rise each morning to the sounds of rim shots in the distance and curse our parents’ gene pool for depriving us of the right funny stuff. We will, in time, become the lepers of this business. The untouchables. We will beg for handouts while all around us people in the Doc Martens du jour will be taking my wife, please, not to mention my computer and a damn good dental plan.

By this point, General Motors will have signed Robin Williams, Ford, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chrysler, Roseanne Barr, and because nobody can figure out that Yushi Hamamoto is really a funny guy, it will be all over for Honda. Toyota, on the other hand, will sign on Seinfeld and threaten to kick everybody’s butt.

Funniest of fonts

Without a degree in Gagology from a reputable institute of higher learning, one’s chance at employment as a copywriter will be a joke. Art directors will spend hours searching for the funniest of fonts. Everywhere we look, supers will appear in Harpo bold or Groucho gothic condensed. When attending advertising award shows, audiences will be served depressants so that they do not suffer severe cardio infarction brought about by too much laughing.

Of course, there will be somebody in the crowd who thinks the word infarction is about as hilarious as a word can be and he or she will be carried out on a stretcher, which for others is pretty damn funny stuff.

And then, it will happen. Somebody, against all odds, will create a piece of advertising that dares to sell something. It won’t be mildly amusing let alone funny.

It may even contain an idea.

Shrugged off

It will be criticized and shrugged off as nothing more than a trend.

But there will be others. These things with ideas. And they will take hold and they will become disturbing to those who fail to see the non humor in them. And in time they will triumph again.

And they will help recapture market share and brand equity and foreign automobiles for those who create them.

And those who lived by the gag will be forced to open strip malls with nothing but novelty shops and will earn their living selling whoopee cushions and plastic barf. And there will be sales with up to 95% off wiener dogs.

Now that’s funny.

terry bell is executive vice-president at Vickers & Benson Advertising, where he began his career in advertising 22 years ago, straying through the broadcast production and account management departments before settling into the creative department – for life – as a copywriter. In the intervening years, he spent time at Scali McCabe Sloves, Toronto, and Saatchi & Saatchi Canada.

Bell has sold Heinz ketchup, Parker Bros. games, Hondas, Sunlight laundry detergent, Cadbury chocolate bars, Toyotas, Ralston Purina, Volvos, Labatt’s Blue, Molson Breweries, General Motors, The Chase Manhattan Bank, Sunbeam appliances, Infiniti automobiles, Jaguar automobiles and British Airways; and has won more than 200 international awards including eight Gold Clios doing so.