Thoughts on puns?
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Has anyone here ever seen their work featured in another agency’s case study? I just found this out today. I worked on a project years ago and another agency launched a very similar idea for the same client just weeks later, but in Canada. I came across their case study today and it used direct footage of our project on it. It’s even on their site.
While they’ve been called the lowest form of comedy, I’ve noticed good ones actually get more laughs than most attempts at humor. For a cheap laugh, there’s certainly a time and a place. Store names. Social posts. Transit ads. Just don’t make them your go-to technique. It’s advertising after all. Let’s not take ourselves so seriously that we can’t throw in some good puns once in a while.
They're the reason I exist.
Puns work, this is advertising and the bar has never been set higher than puns. A good pun that ‘works both ways’ is a good line. Puns as ideas usually don’t work though.
A priest, a rabbit and a minister walk into a bar. The rabbit says: “I think I’m a typo”.
puns are inherently misdirects.
There's a time and a place for them. The time is never. The place is nowhere.
They’ve been found scrawled on the walls, in the form of graffiti, on multiple centuries-old ruins. They are timeless. They are common across different languages, culture and generations. Used sparingly, they continue a tradition (and psychological mnemonic trick) that has worked for eons.
They work well to create a memorable title for an integrated idea or an award entry case study. But not for the actual creative itself. Pedigree Dogglegangers was a good one. Eminem uses a lot of puns, rhymes and word play for layering meaning into his tracks, to great effect. Here are a couple of examples. Love the Way You Lie: Now you get to watch her leave out the window. Guess that's why they call it window pane. Asshole: Shorty, you're fine, but you sort of remind me of a 49er ‘Cause you been a gold digger since you was a minor (miner).
creatives who rail against puns are hacks who just don’t know how to use them.
you should never take anything out of a creative’s tool box. it’s super lame and just shows a CDs insecurities. everything creative is contextual.
Low-hanging fruit devoid of truth.
I think they’re punderrated
now this is a perfect example of a bad pun.
They’re dumb but the public seems to love them
FTW! They rule.
I think writers will sometimes use rhymes, puns, or alliteration as crutches when they don’t actually know what to write. Just how art directors will sometimes use design as a crutch for not having a real concept. We all have our cheats lol
Only if it starts with a truth. Even “Think Small” is, in a way, a pun.
Puns have to be really really good to be good. Otherwise they tend to be eye roll-y.
I wouldn’t say that’s the case with any form of comedy. But if you would, sure.
They're the lowest form of comedy.
For those saying there’s a time and a place. How about this time.
The point here is the pun is not the idea, it’s a joke within the idea. Puns are tactics.
And these.
Or this.
They’re puntastic!