Board Meeting - TRUTH

BlarchBlaces "Well, gentlemen," the CEO said. "We're halfway through another decade."

It was 2015, and the meeting room of the anti-smoking organization TRUTH was clogged with inside directors, gathered in to hear what brilliant ideas he would share.

"I've started to notice that, while we have had major success in the last couple of years, we haven't fully reached the younger demographics yet," he continued. "In this new day and age, kids just don't seem to care that much about us."

He turned around to see his employees, his advisors and his investors blankly staring at him, clearly fantasizing more about what flavor of drink they're gonna get from the vending machine outside than what their boss is saying. A single hand raised up, clearly snapped out of his trance.

"Steve, this isn't school," the CEO barked. "Just say what you think we should do to rectify this."

Steve stammered, "Well, you know how the norm for anti-smoking advertising is to be incredibly nightmarish? Why don't we just try that? That'll get us to be talked about."

"Look, Steve," said the CEO, "That will get us talked about, but that won't get us closer to a younger demographic. It's almost like your coffee addiction is slowly overriding everything."

"I know," Steve mumbled, "And I'll come up with something, but first, I gotta...do something." With that, he ran out the door, and to no one's surprise, he started up the espresso machine.

The boss sighed, then looked directly at everyone. "Any other bright ideas?" he sarcastically asked.

"I've got one," a mysterious voice said from the back of the room. Everyone looked over to where the voice came from...only to find some dumb frat boy standing in the way.

"Hey, can you get out of the way?" one of the advisors asked. "We wanna see who said that."

"Dude," the jock said in a voice that made everyone on the floor underneath audibly groan, "I was the guy who said that. Why can't ya just listen to my epic idea that's gonna make y'all popular again? Just chill out, man."

Of course, any sane person in the room would immediately throw him out the window, but they were so desperate for ideas that they just had to listen. After all, looks aren't everything, so maybe he could save the organization, despite looking like the guy that dies first in a horror movie.

"A'ight," he said. "So I don't know if any of y'all use the Internet, but there are these things called memes, and teenagers love them. If you use some memes in your ads, you're gonna be loved by the younger demographic, and not at all seen as washed up executives trying to seem relevant again. Badaboom, broseph!"

The room is engulfed with a crippling silence. Then, after a few seconds, one director clapped. The rest followed suit, until the entire room is filled with applause. With this new revelation, they got to work straight away, and ended up rebuilding the entire campaign. The result? A well-known PSA commentated on by a famous YouTuber, and a future including collaborations with Buzzfeed, rap songs, implications that pet owners only care about cute cat videos, and, maybe the most magical opportunity, being sarcastically talked about by a 15 year old who can confirm he has no life just by the fact that he typed up all this.

Good luck with whatever "modern" takes on anti-smoking advertising you make next, TRUTH.

Comments

You forgot to mention that the memes were INCREDIBLY outdated, even at the time. - djpenquin999 (4/26/2017)

You say that as if viral marketing including stale and dated Internet culture references is a rare occurrence. - BlarchBlaces (4/26/2017)

This... is greatness. - ProPanda (5/2/2017)

Great - Martinglez (7/14/2017)

This is still my favorite post. - ProPanda (8/19/2017)

I love this post - BlueTopazIceVanilla (1/28/2018)

Why didn't I find this before? - TwilightKitsune (9/18/2018)