‘Puns are the lowest form of wit.’
‘Never use puns in advertising.’
‘If you think advertising is just writing a collection of puns, then you don’t understand advertising.’
‘If you go into an ad agency, with a portfolio of puns for different clients, you’ll just get told to go away.’
‘If you have to use puns, it shows you simply haven’t got a creative idea / ad campaign.’
These are just a few of the things I had drummed into me as a junior copywriter (and many more times over the last few years).
So, I’ve been trained to be dismissive of any advertising which uses puns – to even pour scorn on such campaigns.
And yet… I find this bloody funny:
It’s one of the posters for the Just Eat campaign. If you don’t already know, Just Eat are an online takeaway food service, so ‘I’ve had the Thai of my life’ works within the pun on the above poster … but it’s also perfectly spaced, so that you end up reading it (or even singing it) to the tune of ‘I’ve Had The Time Of My Life’.
That’s the concept across the whole campaign: types of takeaway food set within well-known song lyrics – a celebration of the feeling you get when someone says ‘let’s get a takeaway’ (finished with the endline; ‘Get that mini fist pump feeling’).
I couldn’t help it – when I saw this poster, it made me laugh… regardless of how I’ve been trained to feel about puns. It’s funny.
The rest of the campaign is funny, too. There’s another poster with the line; ‘gimme, gimme, gimme a naan after midnight’.
There’s also that maddening TV ad that’s stuck in my head; ‘I need a Balti!’
And one thing that really comes across, is that the creative team / agency working on this must’ve had so much fun when they were coming up with different executions for the idea. Be honest: who wouldn’t want to sit around and come up with takeaway food-based puns set within song lyrics?
Sod whether puns are a good idea or not – the campaign is funny, it makes me laugh, and it makes me want to order a takeaway through Just Eat. Job done.