Letters

From Cannes to Creative, What’s Up with ‘Whassup’?
Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, how unlike you to gush so worshipfully at advertising as inconsequential as “Whassup?” [Barbara Lippert’s Critique,
July 3]. You, along with everybody else from Cannes on down, it seems, see this as great advertising. “Existential?” “Deeper implications?” ” embodies sacred
connections?” Perhaps, in this culture, drinking, watching TV and talking on the phone passes for a quasi-religious bonding ritual, but is this something to celebrate? Or is it an indictment?
I’ll give you that the spot has a degree of charm and humanity (“borrowed” from True, the
original film), where the infantile entendre or anthropomorphized animal usually sits in beer
commercials.
Being apparently from Mars, however, all I see, finally, is another mindless, one-shot beer spot.
What I, and evidently no one else, dread is the depressing prospect of DDB jamming
artificial legs into this already worn-out moment, putting it on the...