Humor in advertising: it's actually funny

Speaking of Advertising Week attendance, doesn't it seem a little bizarre that Monday's panel at the Time Life Building featuring the inert Travelocity gnome as one of the panelists outdrew the one on humor in advertising yesterday morning that featured "Curb Your Enthusiasm"'s Susie Essman; Alan Zweibel, who was one of the original SNL writers; Robert Mancoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker and, oh, yeah, TBWA/Chiat/Day's Gerry Graf and Teresa Iezzi of Ad Age Creativity? Well, anyway... though one got the feeling that the non-advertising types on the panel had never seen most the ads that were screened, the audience—mostly made up of ad execs—must have found it gratifying to see how impressed Zweibel, Essman and Mancoff were with the state of humor in advertising today, particularly TBWA's weird-o-licious "Berries and Creme" spot for Starburst. " I wonder if I could have done that," said Zweibel. Which brings me to the above commercial. One attendee asked Graf if there was ever a commercial he let get produced even though he didn't find it particularly funny. He mentioned this one with the Skittles-serving beard. His initial reaction when it was pitched to him: "Oh, wow, a magic beard. That's great."