We received 155 entries correctly identifying the Fake Ad for CostU-M on page 77 of the May Observer, including this stream-of-consciousness email from April’s winner, John Bean: “My name Bean I think is referenced to the avatar smol bean. Meaning so cute you want to hug it so tight. As per my 17-year-old son. Had no idea! Or maybe the Bean NTF that’s been floating around. Also from my son. Or maybe cause Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) moved to the metaverse. This one I knew.”
“Me again,” he wrote back a few minutes later. “I think I was overthinking …” His wife, he explained, pointed it out in the phrase “be anyone.”
“I’m curious if you always start with last month’s winner’s name and build an ad around that,” mused Kevin Berasley, “or if sometimes you just have a great idea for an ad and then figure out how to fit the name into it.”
A little of both. By the time we know the winner’s name, we only have five days to write the new ad … and since about four and fifteen-sixteenths of those days are spent procrastinating, that leaves only a short time (what’s a sixteenth of twenty-four hours?) for inspiration. The new ad is always slapped together in a blind panic, then made beautiful and professional by one of the Observer’s brilliant designers.
Our winner is Ken Varnum, who is taking his gift certificate to Zingerman’s.
