nerds' revenge

Steve Hobson and Scott Fleming of Sullivan Higdon & Sink think they know the type of guy who’s interested in pingpong.

To put it bluntly, “nerdy loners.”

“It appeals to the kind of kids we were in high school and college,” Fleming acknowledged.

Hobson and Fleming, a creative team at the Wichita, Kan., agency, developed a language they call “geek speak” for a poster campaign to push the Wichita Table Tennis Center. It’s the kind of oddball, semi-sophisticated tongue that might have them rolling in the computer room but which elsewhere might draw quizzical glances—or a punch.

“When you think about it, Ping-Pong is a lot like the the duck-billed platypus,” reads the copy on one poster the team developed for the table-tennis center.