Mad Men aside, advertising and fiction rarely hang out. Yeah, there have been a few TV comedies set in the agency world–most prominently The Crazy Ones with Robin Williams and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which got canceled due to middling reviews, sinking ratings and the fact that it was created by the guy behind Ally McBeal. There were a couple of other examples in Europe, but those don’t count because subtitles.
Now, however, a Canadian agency has produced its own little mini-sitcom based on the totally insane but also real stuff that constitutes agency life. According to Campaign, the whole thing started as a bunch of pranks played on a clueless intern, but then shit started to get a little too real when he somehow lost his pants at work more than once.
Here’s the trailer starring real Canadian actors!
In Episode One “Bingo Bongo,” the new copywriter and the account guy get super awkward. We don’t really understand why the head of accounts doubles as the head of HR, but Elemental only has somewhere between 11 and 50 employees, so…
It’s about 7 minutes long and we know you guys all have ridiculously short attention spans, but here goes.
An uptight art director? A “how the fuck did he get this job” CD with ridiculous shirts? A copywriter who isn’t nearly as clever as he thinks he is? A lot of reverence for Lee Clow and abuse of phrases regarding boxes, outside of which all the good thinking occurs??
Seems like this was written by people who really do work in advertising. And it was better than most “web series” in that it was not completely awful!
Episode two depicts the incident that allegedly started this whole deal when everyone tried to trick former intern/current copywriter Matt Sadowski into eating his weight in shitty ravioli.
You may note that Elemental uses its own name in these videos; agency reps told Canada’s Marketing Mag this week that the whole thing is shamelessly self-promotional, because what client wouldn’t want to work with an agency that puts its new employees through such glutenous torture??
There are two more episodes on YouTube, and the agency plans to produce a second season.
But if you come away from this post remembering only one thing, make it this: Sadowski played the Green Ranger in the 2005 Power Rangers reboot. Click here and enjoy.