FedEx: Steely Dan is a dildo, not a band
Thursday - October 06, 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
person
We don't get 'french' benefits, we get
fringe benefits
Jimmy Dean makes sausage, James Dean was
an actor
Its not the leaning tower of
pizza
FedEx 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
person
Led Zeppelin is a band, not a metal
blimp
The 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
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