Wowza, LLC, today announced the agency’s award-winning advertisements have been included in a recently published book, Humor in the Advertising Business, written by Fred K. Beard, a published author and tenured professor of advertising in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma.
Jeff Rabkin, the campaign’s copywriter and Wowza’s director of great ideas, along with Stephen Pedersen, the campaign’s art director, created three advertisements for 3rd Lair Skatepark and Pro Shop in Golden Valley, Minn. In chapter three, “Why Typology is a Funny Word,” Beard discusses the campaign’s unusual satire, particularly the ridicule aimed at both the target audience and the client, 3rd Lair Skatepark and Pro Shop.
“We wrote the copy with a kid’s attitude but from an adult’s perspective, and we made up our own slang instead of mangling theirs,” said Rabkin. “We knew these posters would stand out in the store—get noticed—and that the kids would read them if they were funny.”
Recognized for in-store and point-of-purchase collateral, the advertisements received four awards—a bronze at The One Show 2004, a pre-eminent industry awards show entered by agencies worldwide that are producing today’s noteworthy advertising, and two gold and one silver at The Show 2003, a leading competition among the Minneapolis advertising industry and sponsored by the Advertising Federation of Minnesota.
Featuring insight from successful creative artists and strategies, decades of academic research and dozens of the world’s funniest advertisements, Humor in the Advertising Business explores how advertising humor works and what advertisers hope to accomplish by implementing it. Beard is not only a consultant and advertising professor in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma, but he is also the author of nearly 80 sole- and co-authored articles, abstracts and conference pages.
