Fred Leo

Well, maybe not the “best” in a classical sense, since it doesn’t seem to be selling the product, but at least it’s the most honest. As I write, there are four more days of availability on Ebay, so I thought I should immortalize it here before it passes into the cyber-cache hereafter.

Friends who forwarded the ad were kind enough to send me the responses from folks in the trenches. Now I know why no one is bidding. Almost everyone has this exact same portfolio case.

A case for Advertising. A portfolio case.

COPY: We all have dreams. Some dream of adventure or fulfillment in their work, others of leaving the world a better place. Such people do not need this staple of the advertising business — a portfolio case.

I bought this case at the tail end of my writing career, which began with the pursuit of objective truth in journalism, oozed into disseminating selective truth in PR, and finally abandoned truth altogether in advertising. It’s in great condition because I never took it job hunting. After ten years at one of the worst ad agencies on the planet, I didn’t have any produced work I could stand to look at myself, let alone show to strangers. Turns out, I’m a bad, bad liar.

This case is big. Big enough to hold all your creative visions, whether intact or crushed into sad, hopeless scraps of bitter regret. Big enough to haul a national multi-media campaign made of sentence fragments like this surrounded by hectares of white space. It can be stuffed with outrageous, unchallenged 40-point overpromise and weasel-worded disclaimers in type that can’t be read without an electron microscope. It will easily carry brainwashing so powerful it makes women wear capri pants and men shave with five blades at once. Best of all, you’ll have enough cargo capacity to bring back the revisions — over and over, until your hair vanishes and the people at the airport tell you the bags under your eyes are too big for carry-on.

The case is sturdy. Sturdy enough to tote your creative work to agency after agency as you search of better clients, more money, and the title needed to seize credit for work done by the people you supervise. Tough enough to haul incomprehensible, phone-book-class briefing documents, positioning statements or white papers about media fragmentation, niche marketing and behavioral targeting to interminable meetings with jargon infected executives who may also be a little gassy.

And it’s a trusted companion. This case, or maybe parts of it, will be with you as you lie on your deathbed reviewing your life in advertising. Suddenly you realize that before the first hooker could sell her charms, she had to communicate her willingness to do so. A come-hither look, a slit in the gown, and point-of-sale was born. You spent your life in the oldest profession.

Buy it today!

DISCLAIMER: Your results may vary. This case may be haunted. No electron microscopes were harmed in the making of this ad. Hectares may be fractional.

(ACCOUNT SERVICE COMMENTS: Too dark. Highlight feature set, strengthen call-to-action. Romance it!)
REV1.

HEAD: Achieve immortality and eternal fulfillment with this advertising portfolio case!

SUB: Just in time for (holiday TBD.)

COPY: Most people know that the only true path to total consciousness is through a career in advertising, yet few know how vital a portfolio case is to that noble quest. Without one, your brilliance is prone to slosh both hither and yon — or worse, to and fro! But in the right portfolio case, your magical advertising concepts are safe and secure, even cozy. And that makes you, the creative genius, confident and unstoppable as you carry this unassuming yet magnificent case into lengthy meetings with jargon-prone executives who are often gassy after lunch.

Crafted of actual or simulated slaughtered bovinery in the olde-world tradition of exploited labor, this case makes a proud statement in black, the industry standard that at once communicates apathetic elegance and unpredictable moodiness. And since you only have big ideas, the case is oversized, like the Titanic, the Roman Empire or the egos of other advertising creatives. That means it can carry concept after concept, revision after revision, even 500-page positioning statements — and still have room for several gallons of gin.

SUB: Pre-haunted for your convenience.

Oh, the stories this case could tell and will tell once you go insane in advertising and start hearing voices (Be sure to ask it about New Coke!). You’ll be spellbound by this portfolio’s chilling tales of bureacratic tragedy, destructive office politics, and hours of precious life squandered on slaughtered ideas — of fabulously inventive concepts made mundane by incremental compromises in gruelling layers of approvals. You’ll laugh. You’ll weep. And one day, you’ll open a gallon of gin and toast the circle of corporate life as you compose the Ebay ad that will attract the next lucky owner of this supernatural and eternal portfolio case.

DISCLAIMER: Total consciousness may be theoretical. Some executives are gassy before and during lunch.

(ACCOUNT SERVICE COMMENTS: I’ve tweaked it for you. Here’s Rev.2)HEAD: Handsome black portfolio case system — with zipper!
SUB: The must-have accessory for today’s creative advertising person.
COPY:

• Four advanced operational modes — open, closed. partially open, and partially closed.
• Portable or static, depending on whether it’s moving.
• Eventually assumes the temperature of its environment .
• Magically obeys most laws of physics!

SNIPE: Buy it TODAY!

Update: I still have it.

Update 2: Wait, no I don’t.