Creatives will often spend copious amounts of time during the work day with their feet up on their desk, trying to come to grips with the clients latest batch of refusals on the copy they just spent days slaving over. So naturally, they require a comfortable – yet fashion forward shoe, that can withstand this type of grueling routine. Not to mention, playing ping pong or foosball without the proper supportive footwear,  is cause to throw ones back out or twist an ankle.

So why do Ad people share such a connection and universal acceptance of one shoe?

Well maybe it has to do with the history of Chuck Ts.

Charles Taylor, aka Chuck, was a real person. He was one of the first basketball players to officially endorse a sports shoe. Converse then hired him in 1921 to run basketball clinics around the US, selling the sport of basketball, and the shoe it took to play it. In 1923, Chuck Taylor’s name was added to the All-Star ankle patch. Next, came World War II, and Converse was tapped to shift production for war times and outfit all soldiers going through basic training in the Chuck Taylor All-Star.

Could a history so rich in product endorsement and paradigm synergy optimization integral branding metrics Facebook be the answer? Of course not, that sentence was just a bunch of marketing buzzwords I heard a client use in our last meeting.

I’m not an investigative reporter, so I’ll just assume it has something to do with the fact that, how many clothing styles or items of dress have been around for close to a century, and can blatantly brag about being in style for the general population for at least 50 of those years? Chucks have been a symbol of “hip”, “cool”, “in the fashion know” for 50-plus years.

Or maybe it has something to do with Creative folks ability to identify with a pair of shoes that reflect their individual styles. Which, when you think about it, isn’t really all that individual.

But Chucks remain as versatile as ever. Not only worn by lowly Jr. Copywriters making barely enough to survive and forced to wear the only shoes he/she can afford – without committing fashion suicide. Chucks are also worn with ease by corner office Creative Directors and agency Presidents. Worn with a suit they make the statement that you’re successful and a person of influence, yet still connected to what’s cool and trendy. Clients love that. Although what it really says is, you’re someone who spends too much time and money trying to appear like you have neithe

Take motivational posters, for example. You know the type I’m talking about: photograph of a mountain, or silhouette of a runner, or a saccharine picture of a kitten hanging onto a branch, with a caption featuring a prominent word or phrase like “Excellence” or “Overcoming Adversity”, typically with an explanatory statement in smaller text like “You can achieve anything if you work hard” or “There is no reward without struggle”.

Back in the late ’90s, these posters were the toast of the corporate community: you’d find at least one hanging in the offices of executives and the cubicles of overly-ambitious assistants the world over. But now, only ten years later, the overwhelming cultural trend towards irony and cynicism has relegated what was once an eager, fresh-faced expression of business inspiration to the realm of amusing curiosity at best and, at worst, the stuff of internet-meme-mockery.

Many websites have started allowing users to write their own captions for a variety of photos that range from the mildly ironic to the patently absurd to the graphically offensive, and then generating the caption-with-photo into the motivational poster template. Titled “demotivational posters”, this meme has taken off in a huge way with entire websites devoted to user-generated demotivation.

Here at SAPL, we recognize the need to sling a little mud our own way every now and again – and what better way to illustrate our ability to laugh at ourselves than by highlighting what happens to old ideas in a new era? Besides, some of those posters are pretty damn funny.

Check it out for yourself, and share a laugh at the expense of ad people everywhere.