Wednesday, May 12, 2021

My DSC teste-monial


I posted this on Linkedin last week and because I got busy introducing some Trumpsters/Red Hats to the notion of facts and the real world, forgot to put it up on Facebook.

I know from the reaction of my advertising colleagues that it's worth a laugh, albeit a very cheap one. And as any blogger will tell you it's always good to have a daily topic drop into your lap.

Let me preface this with the disclaimer that I had no part in the rest of this email blast. 

When I came on to Dollar Shave Club, a year ago, they were in the midst of launching Ball Spray. For the record, I'm no longer at DSC and have moved over to Honey (joinhoney.com).

Much of the Ball Spray work had been done when I arrived, but I can't tell you how much fun it was to ballstorm new ideas with Matt Knapp and Matt Orser about this unique product.

It was in one of these sessions that I blurted (gotta give me restraint points) the notion that we should use the word Teste-monials. How do you say no to that? If there were a category at Cannes for Cheesy Scrotal Wordplay, I'd be a cinch for a Gold Lion.

Thankfully, it didn't take much in the way of arm-twisting to convince the brass at DSC to man up and use the phrase.

Perhaps even more rewarding was the fact that I was being paid to make dick jokes. Which required an extensive search of euphemisms for one's Crown Jewels, including, but not limited to:

  • Nads
  • Nards
  • snow globes
  • meat clackers
  • sweasticles
  • Rocky Mountain oysters
  • manberries
  • ballslaw
  • yarblockos
  • kangaroo apples
  • turkey skin handbag
  • trouser barnacles
  • South Jersey Sandbag
  • dirty potatos 
  • Mediterranean Leg Tits
On top of that, there were times when our zoom calls often required other employees, namely women. You might imagine that in these woke times that would cause a problem. But our mission was clear. We had to sell Ball Spray and the DSC brand dick-tated (sorry) that it be done with a sense of humor.

In essence, we had been given carte blanch to spew (sorry again) whatever juvenile thoughts came into our arrested developed minds.

Even better, and to this day I wish I had taken screen grabs, when one of our sophomoric lines mades it past reluctant executives, it had to pass muster with legal team.

I relish the days when I would receive an email from the lawyers asking, "...when you say 'kangaroo apples' or 'Mediterranean Leg Tits', where exactly is that phrase coming from? Was it used in a movie or a TV show?" 

That's some unintentional comedy gold. 

Thank you Kunkel, Steinberg & Gallagher. Thank you

1 comment:

Unknown said...

My eight-year-old son Liam and I just fell off our chairs laughing at these. Well done!