Friday, May 20, 2005
Wrong. Just wrong.
The noon o'clock hour finds me sitting in a comfortable office situated in a large bldg, trolling the Web while I await more ad copy. See, today is a day I make $$. I'm filling in for a coypeditor (haha, the spelling, funny) at Grey Worldwide--big ad firm--and I'm having a good time of it. Granted, I've only actually edited for an hour or so (workload is unpredictable; sometimes slow, other times flooded), but still. Still. It's neat.
So in the world of ad editing, one looks at proofs (1,2,3) that indicate varying stages of completion. I've come up on mostly 3s, which isn't a whole lotta fun considering any errors were likely caught in the 1/2 stages. Yeah, so copy's generally pretty polished by the third proof. But I did just manage to catch something--text overlapping art, which, ok, was dead obvious, but still. Oh, this was weird: I looked over an ad for Imitrex that included a mini-*quiz* by which one is supposed to be able to determine "hey, that really was a migraine!" or "hmm, so my headaches are just regular; apparently I'm a big baby." It's made up of five questions, most followed by, you know, a [?]. Ah, but *most* isn't enough, see. One's without! So I inserted the [?] with a circle around it, doctored some comma-crazed text further down, and ran the end result by my mentor, Casey (grrreat guy). But... but! Turns out, the ad has already run in a number of mags, including Shape. SO, at this point, the client only cares about major errors like gross misspellings, things like that. [?]s and [,]s? Tssh, small-time.
So there I was, trying to show off my eagle's eye/finely tuned proofread-ery, and whadaya know--no dice. Stupid Imitrex. Sheezus, Casey then showed me this Wellbutrin ad that ran awhile back with BLAtant flaws--like this: "Women who are breastfeeding, (blah blah blah). should consult a physician, blah blah blah." Replace the blahs with the actual text, and that's how it ran. What in tarnation?? I know. Stupid Wellbutrin.
Calling all Augusten Burroughs fans: Just so happens I have a copy of Magical Thinking in my college-kid's backpack (grow up, I know) today. How fitting is this? (Although Dry would have been fitting-er still, hmm?)
Time for an Aetna ad. Hope you're well.
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Ahhh, welcome to the world of advertising! So, uh, tell me...is everyone still dressing fashionably-chic (cuz, you know, in the ad world, EVERYONE dresses trendy). Are there plenty of Metrosexuals? And girls wearing Manolos?
Thanks for the welcome! You know, it's funny: This was advertising, old-people style. A few Metros, but not nearly the # I'd have predicted. And Manolos? Maybe on one chica.
Apparently I have yet to see *the real thing,* hmm?
Maybe it's that New Yorkers are more real than the other cities I've worked in (LA, DC and Seattle). In fact, in Seattle's largest agency, it's like walking around in a frickin Ford Modeling Agency. Yeah, we had to weigh-in once a week and our hair had to color match to a Pantone color swatch.