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The Mature Manure

Friday 02/17/2006 12:35 PM

Close your eyes and you can see the crack marketing braintrust sitting around the table, riffing off each other, developing the hot new slogan for their latest client, namely, our favorite composted manure company: Black Kow.

Finally, someone looks up from the middle of his rhyming dictionary and says, "You know, the word mature rhymes with manure."

The room falls silent as they all turn to their mentor, the fifty-something, gray-haired wizard of the ad world who just got in from the airport. Having spent the last few days at the state-of-the-art Black Kow manure composting facility, he's convinced that he now has a feel for manure in his bones — in his very soul.

He closes his eyes. His arms lift up into the air from the side of his body and he waves his hands in the air once, then twice, like a vaudeville magician about to pull a dove out of his hat.

"I can see the t-shirt," he says. "It has a... a..."

You could hear a fly fart in the corner of the room.

"It has a black cow on the t-shirt," he says.

Quiet gasps fill the room. Someone whispers under their breath, "Brilliant."

He continues. "And underneath the cow, it says..."

Pencils and pens at the ready.

"It says The Mature Manure."

The pretty young intern from Columbia University faints. Someone shouts out, "That's it! That's the one!" They look at him like he just pointed out the sun and said that must be where all this bright light is coming from. Ignoring his uncanny ability for stating the obvious, the team gets to work on the ads, the website and the sponsorship opportunities.


Many months later, after the new Black Kow marketing campaign has taken the composted manure industry by storm, laying waste to all their competitors, I'm staring at the ad at the bottom of the bag. I wonder if I'll be able to empty three bags of composted manure into the wash tub so I can send in my $10.90 (saving $1.00 in the process!) along with three UPC's so I can get my coordinated cap and shirt declaring to all the world that when it comes to composted manure, I'm a Black Kow kind of guy.

Finally, I give up all hope of ever pulling it off for the simplest of reasons: I am not worthy of brandishing The Mature Manure across my chest and forehead.

Maybe in the next life.

File Under: Lotus Flower
Music: Everything but the Girl "Acoustic"

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