The Comedy Club

Alright, so check it out…

Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking up this imaginary brand of ballpoint pens. Why?

Three words: Bic for Her.

The number of people who all collectively thought this was an idea worth taking seriously absolutely baffles me. I mean, I like to think it couldn’t have been more than two or three, but even then…

And so then I thought about what all is going so very wrong here. For starters, I mean, just look at that color palette: Orange, white, black, purple, maroon…….??????????

Something else I realized never quite felt right about pen ads is how there seems to be a chronic unacknowledgement of the perfect chance to, I don’t know, show what that product can actually do?

To my surprise, Bic actually has done this before.

And, like, I don’t hate it! And that’s not the only example either!

But then, why even make something like a pen “for Her”? Everything about this just felt wrong.

And so I got to thinking. About pens. About how we use them; letters, class notes, a work memo, greeting cards, etc.; how, in the age of the laptop and smartphone, we aren’t using pens as much as we used to; how, per a CNN article from over a decade ago, we’re hurtling toward a future where penmanship just isn’t really valued. Pretty bleak, no?

And that got me thinking, what if a pen really leaned into all this?

Enter Basic. The write stuff.

Now, is this a particularly great idea? Well, that’s not really for me to say. But it’s sure as hell a better idea than Bic for Her. And I know that’s not really setting the bar super high, but for now, that’s enough for me.

More to come. Stay tuned.

-Ben