How Advertising Parodies Ruined My Backup Career

For almost as long as there's been advertising, there's been people making fun of it. Three strong examples of this also happen to be three of the biggest influences on my own sense of humor: The Simpsons, David Letterman, and the print version of CRACKED magazine. Consider, for instance, this Mortal Kombat inspired feminine hygiene ad from an issue of CRACKED.

Or this Canyonero ad from The Simpsons, which may or may not appear below (the embed code seems to have some kind of self destruct).

Or this bit from Late Night with David Letterman.


All of this made it extremely difficult for me to ever take advertising seriously. That wouldn't be so bad except that my obligatory job-to-do-while-waiting-to-make-it-as-a-writer was going to be graphic design, which is basically the art side of marketing. I studied it in high school and college, and it was frequently difficult for me to get through a project without injecting some kind of humor or storytelling into it. The best example is probably a magazine design I did. While the other students did some of their flashiest, most impressive work, I couldn't resist making mine look like a hastily thrown-together fan club magazine for the guy that sat next to me in class. It got a lot of puzzled looks from my classmates.

When I fought these instincts, I ended up over-correcting, making designs that were too straightforward and boring. It was pretty rare to find the right balance. This wasn't the only reason I stopped pursuing graphic design, but it was a big one.