Finally, Advertising That Confuses Only Selected Audiences

Someone please give the PR folks at Pemco Insurance a medal or trophy or something. They deserve it for their absolutely brilliant advertising campaign.

The Seattle-based company (that operates almost entirely in the Northwest) has come with an ingenious ad run that highlights the quirks and niches of the alternative breed of people that inhabit the upper-left corner of the country, with its hilarious (and startlingly accurate, to my knowledge) Northwest Profiles, running the tag line "We're a lot like you."

Now, I would normally not include myself in the demographic implied by the "you" in the tag line. However, after having a good laugh browsing the website that supplements the TV and radio ads (if you thought those were good, check out the website, www.werealotlikeyou.com , I sent the link to my dad in New York (something we do regularly with funny links and assorted nonsense) who was....(wait for it)....entirely unamused.

I realized, to my own surprise, that he didn't think that the site wasn't funny, but that he simply didn't get what it was talking about. The humor flew entirely over his head. And this was slightly shocking - a real strong sign that I was slowly and surely becoming a Northwesterner. Not that I had a problem with that.

Now, I may not be intimately familiar with many of the types that Pemco describes, like the "Green Lake Power Walker (#64)", "Sandals and Socks Guy (#56)", or the elusive-sounding "Walla Walla Wine Wine Woman Woman (#96)". But even in the time I've spent in the Northwest (not yet two years), I've become familiar enough with the region to know that, somewhere, these people do indeed exist.

And then I came across Northwest Profile #100: The Confused East Coast Transplant. I thought, yes, that would be me. Now, the picture and statistics don't exactly match me, but the caption is just dead-on (see my last post as well for more on this).

So to the good folks at Pemco who came up with the ads, bravo.

(The website even allows for user submissions, many of which are also very funny. I submitted the "Really Thinks Crocs Are Edible Guy" profile. Come on, people. You can't eat rubber shoes. Quit deluding yourselves.)