FedEx: Steely Dan is a dildo, not a band
Thu - October 6, 2005
Kudos to the ad agency who pulled one over on the
corporate big-wigs at FedEx by making a dildo reference in a national
TV ad . The spot involves office workers
explaining to a dimwitted coworker that he is never right on anything. They go
through a brief laundry list of his
blunders:Steely Dan is a band, not a
personWe don't get 'french' benefits, we get
fringe benefitsJimmy Dean makes sausage,
James Dean was an actorIts not the leaning
tower of pizzaFedEx is not more
expensive 
Apparently
unbeknownst to any of the squares up in FedEx corporate, Steely
Dan , the band, named themselves after a steam-powered dildo
described in the William Burroughs book
Naked
Lunch . I don't expect the suits to
recognize such a reference, so the blame (or kudos) can't be placed on them.
However, among the ad agency that wrote the ad, there was bound to be someone
familiar with the reference. Ditto among the cast and crew that shot the ad.
Even if nobody was intimately familiar with the writings of Burroughs, someone
was bound to have heard the reference before. I've never read any of his stuff,
but I have been told by various people at various times that Steely Dan was a
dildo in some book somewhere. It's like a little playground secret adults like
to tell each other. It wasn't like
there weren't other options to ponder:Lynard
Skynard is a band, not a
personLed
Zeppelin is a band, not a metal
blimpThe point I'm trying to make is
that someone in some position of creative control over the ad had to know and
probably had to fight to keep from laughing out loud as the project passed
through each phase of approval. Thanks to this brazen individual(s) we all have
a new playground secret to spread.
Posted at 01:31 AM < Just Another Brick in the Blog 
Email this story
Email this story to someone
|
|
