Monkeys on typewriters

I’m a discreet man when it comes to copywriting criticism. As a rule, I don’t like to single out specific companies for naming and shaming.

But of course there are exceptions to every rule.

Pretty much every time I’ve ventured online recently, I have been confronted by an ad for Accenture. Actually, “confronted” is not the right description. More like “visually violated and intellectually insulted”.

It all began with this little gem.

As I said on Twitter at the time, this copy seems like it was written by a monkey with a typewriter, on a 3-day meth bender.

As you can tell, this particular copy-monkey is obviously quite partial to a portmanteau. Unfortunately, though, his drug-addled simian brain can’t tell when the portmanteau doesn’t really work. Here’s another one of his portmantattempts.

Queasyou? Then I strongly suggest you take an anti-emetic before reading any further. I’ll wait.

Ready? Here goes.

Rotate to the new? Rotate to the new??

It’s a grammatical abomination, of course. But that might almost be acceptable if it made a scintilla of sense.

I’m intrigued, you see, about how one might arrive at newness via a process of rotation. Is this an ad for rotisserie ovens? Hell, maybe it is – it seems as good a guess as any.

Clearly, the Accenture copywriter has a penchant for the surreal.

Or even the apparently impossible.

For example, you might think that ‘the future’ is merely a function of time. If so, prepare to be Accentureducated.

See, there you have it. Not only can you invent the future, you can actually reinvent it. Someone call Stephen Hawking and let him know.

These Accenture ads don’t always suggest the physically impossible, though. Sometimes they just go for the physically incongruous.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you wanted to advertise the concept of making a profit. What physical metaphor might you use?

Leaping? Soaring?

Or something like this?

And with that, I think we’ve sufficiently plumbed the depths of Accenture’s advertising.

The context to all this, of course, is that consulting firms are moving in on creative agencies’ territory. Indeed, Accenture itself recently acquired Sydney agency The Monkeys.

But will it improve their own communications?

I guess time will tell. Or to put it another way, the future will be reinvented.