Palinode elsewhere: The Riders and the Choddy

Not only should I post on my blog more often, I should update with my actual writing elsewhere. Paid writing has eventually crowded out the amount of creativity and mental space I'm willing to devote to the blog, but I miss this place. Hello blog.

Anyway. Another post on Saskatchewan advertising, which as everyone knows is just burning up the twitterwebs these days. Click the link to read the entire story.

The Roughriders. The Oath. And the Choddy. The Choddy. The Choddy.

If you have eyes and you’ve been using them to look at televisions or billboards, then you’ve probably seen the new “Rider Oath” ad campaign from the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Featuring a series of people proclaiming their fealty to the Rider Nation, the ads seek to cast a warm light on our fondness for watching oversize men in green satin tights slam into each repeatedly until they’re fired or traded.

Two ads have been produced so far, and I sense more in the pipeline. After all, there’s no reason for Steve Mazurak to stop ordering future installments of people standing in front of a camera with green and white makeup troweled on their faces; the ads are quick and cheap to produce, and participants only need to master a script that consists of two ambiguous sentence fragments and nine independent clauses, three of which are repetitions. What’s not to like about this setup?

There are two things not to like about this setup.