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How Zulu Alpha Kilo Uses Satire to Call Out Industry Hype and Sacred Cows
Celebrating the shop's greatest bits
For more than three decades, our local Agency of the Year competition, run by Strategy magazine, has asked every shortlisted shop in Canada to create a video for their annual event. What began as a mandatory awards-night assignment has, for us, become a tradition of using the platform to poke fun at ourselves—and, ultimately, to challenge the industry we love to be better.
This year’s video, “Catch Me If You Cannes,” lampoons the absurdity of case studies and the lengths agencies will go to win. Set in a prison therapy circle, a CCO named Jacob confesses to faking an entire case study for a “left-handed mango chutney.” Even hardened criminals are disgusted by his scam and turn on him.
It’s a sequel to 2022’s “Left-Handed Mango Chutney.” In that video, everyone at a dinner party listens intently to a brain surgeon describing his life-saving work. A CCO named Greg (Jacob’s agency partner) then proudly describes the “amazing case study” he recently finished for the “under-represented left-handed community.” When no one at the table is impressed—or has even heard of it—another guest mentions she wrote the popular “beer commercial with the farting horse.” Suddenly, everyone lights up.
The scene perfectly captured how the work that wins awards and the work that wins people’s hearts are often worlds apart—and how much of what wins is work the public never actually sees.
With earlier efforts like 2021’s “Awards Gone Wild,” we imagined other professions resorting to the same tactics agencies use to win accolades: a lifeguard staging a rescue, a doctor performing unnecessary surgery, or kids selling cookies who only want strangers to pose with boxes for a case-study photo op.
Over the years, we’ve tackled everything from RFPs to RTO, holding companies to spec work. The purpose has always been the same: to use humor to tackle subject matter that few agencies are willing to talk about.
We always tell our clients to take risks and push boundaries, but how often do we as an industry do the same? Comedy has been our way to provoke, challenge convention, and remind ourselves not to take this business too seriously.
With “Living From Work,” a 2023 satire about office culture and return-to-office policies, we exaggerated the issue through a ridiculous premise: an agency CEO who proudly announces that her staff must come in seven days a week. It captured both perspectives—the frustrations of employees and the pressures of employers—while exposing how extreme workplace culture had become that year.
Along the way, these videos have even caught the attention of Forbes magazine. In one article, industry consultant Avi Dan called us “the Saturday Night Live of agencies” and asked why more shops don’t take a stronger position on branding themselves instead of being viewed as commodities by clients.
For us, these videos are a way to laugh at our industry while holding ourselves accountable. They’re a chance to look inward and ask, “Do we realize how ridiculous this is? It’s only advertising.”
On a personal level, they are a creative outlet for me and I always look forward to conceiving and directing the films each year. If they make people laugh, think, and talk—and maybe inspire a little change—then I feel we’ve done our job.
I wish more agencies would stand up, speak out and tackle the issues that afflict our industry.
