Bad Ads For Worse Things
Or, The Pun Also 'Tises
If you live in Los Angeles or your cookies are telling your web browser that you live in Los Angeles then you may have seen this advertisement from the LA City Emergency Management Department on a billboard or Twitter feed near you:
You may have even received a fishy (and also phishy) text message from an unknown number that looked like this:
It’s an invasive new form of radical advertising — radvertising, if you will — wherein really egregious puns are deployed to raise awareness about serious public safety and health risks.
They are designed to grab your attention by making you think:
What is this? Is this a joke? No, it’s from an official government account. But did they actually pay someone to write this? It’s pretty hack. Oh, maybe they got hacked? No, no, it’s not distasteful enough for that. I think it’s real. I think it’s actually—Wait, there are tsunamis in LA?
Like it or not, rads like this are not going anywhere—at least until this country adopts stricter pun control legislation. I guess this is the “new media landscape” people are always talking about. But, as someone who specializes in clumsy puns and snappy taglines, all I see is a chance to cash in.
So it was no surprise when the Mayor called this morning. I told her I’d be happy to pen some more public health and safety advisories for the city. I was also happy we weren’t on FaceTime so she couldn’t see me licking my chops at this juicy career-making opportunity—but I didn’t tell her that part.
Seriously though, this is serious work and I treat it seriously. This is about saving lives. When they say Los Angeles is “The City of Angels,” they don’t mean it’s full of dead people.
So I got to work immediately and I started knocking these out of the park right off the bat—which is the best way to knock things out of the park as far as I’m concerned.
You see, when it comes to tortured wordplay, the trick is to just go with the first idea you think of. The less labor you put into it, the more labored it will feel; that’s how you know you’re doing it right.
So, before they hit the streets and the tweets, here are some more bad ads for worse things:
Are you ready for hurricane season? HURRY and you CAN be!
Dealing with wildfire? Get your prep kits PILED HIGHER.
Don’t sleep on earthquake readiness. Earthq-WAKE UP to earthquake STEADINESS.
Are you prepared for a typhoon? Or just preparing THAI FOOD?
Tell your friends it’s mudslide season, not all-of-my-BUDS-DIED season.
Extreme heat wave? Time for an ICE CREAM TREAT CRAVE!
Bee swarm outside? BE SWORN to stay inside.
Got a poltergeist? Get a JOLT O’ CHRIST.
Got a NEW MOAN, YEAH? Get checked for pneumonia.
Don’t get WRECKED in the CAN, SIR. Get screened for rectal cancer.
There is no cure for HIV, but it can be controlled with proper medical care. Get tested. Know your status. And remember: It’s a human immunodeficiency virus, not a “YOU, MAN, IMMUNE O’ DA FISH IN da SEA” virus.
Thank you and you’re welcome. It’s literally the very least I can do. And I just want to close by saying that if this new ad campaign saves just one life… I will consider it a massive failure. ⚑
More comedy:
Summer music you didn’t ask for:
☊ Mixtape: The Balm — Tropical tunes with digital dimensions
☊ Mixtape: Punch Ups — Crunchy drummed up summer punchers
☊ Mixtape: Woodward — Organ-ized noise for the return of summer and society
☊ Mixtape: Signals — Driving songs for driving in LA
Jolt o’ Christ, and radvertising. Good god. There really ought to be a secret government watch list flagging people who come up with puns like these.