That’s What She Shed
Words are alive and well in the internet age, observes Faris Yakob, and their broader cultural effects are more than ever tied to their ability to break free of their intended contexts and become bigger then the ad — here’s how it worked for these brands.
Once in a while, advertising transcends the stratum reserved for commercial communication. It can be seen to have an effect on culture, creating linguistic ripples that appear on talk shows or Tik-Tok.
Last year, insurance giant State Farm released a batch of commercials and one ignited a minor cultural conflagration. In the spot in question, a woman named Cheryl has called the fire brigade because her shed is on fire. But it’s not just any shed, it’s her ‘she shed’, which is the female equivalent of a ‘man cave,’ but in the garden and more tastefully furnished.
The agency didn’t coin the term, it was an existing idea most people hadn’t heard of. They found a small pocket of culture and riffed on it. The ad is funny enough, playing with the obvious tongue twisting opportunities as Cheryl says she wants a more chichi she shed.
It aired for months before attracting the attention of the memetic machine. The ad brought the…
