SLOTHMORE INSTITUTE

STAGED PROTEST FOR MORE FREE TIME FAILS WHEN NO ONE SHOWS UP.

Chicago, IL - Slothmore Institute, a national organization supplying responsibility shirkers with excuses to stay home and the tools to negate the need to ever leave the couch, announced last month that its members would execute a large scale work no-show and sit-in.

The protest was scheduled to occur last week around the very immobile Picasso sculpture in downtown Chicago. The movement, or lack thereof, wanted to forward the cause of not having to work, to demand more home delivery of food, and argue that Chicagos garbage collectors be required to remove the trash from the garbage cans under members sinks. The organization can claim a 50% success rate, as members across the greater metro, failed to show up for work that monday, but also failed to show up for the protest.

When Harvey Funkel, the head of Slothmore, whose motto is STAY IN, was contacted at his home for comment, he asked us to hold on, left the phone on the table, and returned to what sounded like a rousing round of Tiger Woods Pro Circuit Golf. After waiting twenty minutes for Funkel to return to the phone, our reporter hung up and called one of the institutes 2000 local inactive members, Todd Hurley.

Hurley responded to our call by yelling to his roommate, Yo, dude, the @$#^*%ing paper is on the phone, I am gonna be in the @$#^*%ing, paper followed by the sound of a hi-five and what we can only assume was the gurgling of some sort of waterpipe.

Our only course of action in the face of all of this inaction was to visit the Slothmore web site Slothmore Institute which houses many compelling arguments for slacking, lots of ingenious devises for getting out of work and enjoyment of social inertia. Particularly, amusing was the Hard-working Gregg video. Not surprising, the site has not been updated in years. Still, as a monumental testament to complete lack of motivation, it is well worth a visit.

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mr.mike's picture

hey, mr.mike here,

It's hard to say who is really behind this. I'm a contract worker in the Best Buy corporate advertising department.

Last Fall, we were concepting around the idea 'Stay In". One of my team members said that he saw that line used before and while searching the web we came across what was left of the abandoned Slothmore website. We contacted Slothmore to discuss a partnership, where we would use our in-house programmers to help get his site running again in exchange for running banner ads on the site. Understandably, it took a couple of months for Funkel, Slothmore founder and self-admitted lazybones, to get back to us. He sounded distracted and less than excited, but said, as long as he didn't have to do any work, he was game. So I guess, one could say that while Slothmore is its own entity, our in-house team made the Slothmore rebirth and continued inactivity possible.

Footnote: We received a very appreciative email from Funkel, but have not been able to reach him since. We are glad to have helped him attain his personal development closer to total stasis.

kamari's picture

Cut the crap please mr.mike. We all work in advertising here, and would really like to know. It's funny and all but answer a direct question honestly. What agency did this?

mr.mike's picture

The Straight Dope: Best Buy corporate, in-house advertising, from start to finish. No outside agency. But keep it under your hat - We love it when people assume you can't get this kind of creative directly from a corporate ad department.

trillium's picture

I am loathe to make this point.

An agency in Minneapolis created a radio campaign 18 months ago for the Minneapolis area YMCA where the Couch Potato Institute was protesting the Y's efforts to get people back in shape. Last July the radio ran again and a mock protest was staged the first week of August which was picked up on 4 of the news stations.

Tell me it was a coincidence. The ad police are curious.

AnonymousCoward's picture

And Best Buy Corporate offices are in Richfield, only 1/2 mile from the YMCA where the "protest" occurred.

kamari's picture

Aaaah, thank you for the reply. One shouldn't underestimate the in-house agencies I've learned in my years in this biz. Remember Gap gaining gold Clios for in-house Art? It was I who sulked with the silver that year.

kamari's picture

Perhaps it's ripe for badland?

mr.mike's picture

Hi Trillium,

Being a self-admitted shut in who lives on a couch in the sticks and is too busy to watch TV or exercise, I can verify that no one involved with the creation of Slothmore or in any of the many creative and client reviews (being in a corporation you can imagine how many there have been.) no one ever mentioned seeing/hearing the Y campaign or of it's mock protest. It's a total coincidence. So if the ad police could holster their firearms, that'd be great..

Another, coincidence was the radio ad for another company 'supplying excuses' that I heard for the first time the week the Slothmore site went live. I called the station to see when they started running the ad and they said that the date and time I heard it was the first time it ran. Weird.

Thanks for the heads up, though. (Although, I get a little freaked out by coincidences.)

AnonymousCoward's picture

I'll call around to see if someone from that agency has a copy of the radio that can be posted. It ran last summer and in spring 2003. I used to work with the writer and neither of us are there anymore.

badland would be most excellent.

AnonymousCoward's picture

This glass-house dwelling art director is not and will not throw stones. Ever. And Couch Potato Institute was NEVER a website which is very nice and quite funny. Nice work you are doing.

mr.mike's picture

No worries, but do post that spot, It'd be great to hear it.

Dabitch's picture

Someone once told me "Ideas don't belong to you. They belong to God. You don't create ideas. You hear them". Naturally I though he was off his trolley - which he is, in a very sane way. Since then I've seen so many 'coincidences' happen between me and my team mates, me and my roommates, friends at work and other pals and so on, I swear It is like ideas are out in the ether and you you 'catch' them like the flu at times. Well timed coincidences are always interesting for Badland - only a fraction of the cases in there are actual obvious 'thefts'. The others, who knows how that happened? The idea-God messed with your heads, that's how! ;)

(the someone was Paul Arden - and the first person who calls me a namedropper gets a wedgie, PA has said some cool stuff, lets credit him, kay?)

mr.mike's picture

That other radio spot that just started running is for Arctic Cat. I'm not sure who did the spot but I'm guessing it is also local. If anyone knows and could add to the serendipity, that'd be cool.