AdWeak and digital studio Portal A have created a video that mocks agency life
Parody Twitter account AdWeak, known for its Onion-esque headlines about the advertising industry, recently teamed up with digital studio Portal A to create a video that anyone who works at an agency will be able to relate to.
The short film gives viewers a satirical peek into the quintessential modern ad agency, a place where employees spend 12 hours dreaming up hashtags for a soap brand and creatives are too arrogant to realize that the five million “views” on their latest ad actually came from a click farm in the Philippines.
The video also takes a jab at the industry’s obsession with meaningless jargon – at one point, an agency staffer spits out the words “multi-faceted cross platform integration” during a brainstorming session.
The film was created in a collaboration with AdWeak for Portal A’s AdHoc YouTube channel, which hosts a handful of parody videos that the San Francisco-based shop has created over the years, including a spoof of Airbnb’s ridiculed ‘Is Mankind?’ spot and a video that makes fun of the industry’s growing obsession with creating over-the-top April Fool’s ads for brands.
“We work with brands all the time, but AdHoc has been our chance to take a step back and have some fun with the absurdity of the ad industry,” said Nate Houghteling, executive producer at Portal A. “AdWeak was the perfect match for us because they’re doing the same thing but with a different angle. Luckily for both of us, there’s plenty of nonsense to go around.”