Dilbert, the wildly successful and deeply subversive anti-management cartoon strip, has become a marketing tool.

Now this, you’ll pardon the analogy, is a bit like getting Ernst Zundel to shill for the B’nai Brith, or having Maude Barlow sell subscriptions to Saturday Night, but it was probably inevitable.

Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams, once drew a strip where a sign over a corporate entrance says Marketing Department and underneath it says Two Drink Minimum. In Dilbert land, marketing people wear long robes and laurel wreaths on their heads, like Delphic Oracles. A recent dialogue in the strip goes like this: Oracle: (Pointing to well) When you work in marketing, you use the research well to test new ideasany day but Friday you can shout your question into the well and an answer will come back. Dilbert: Why not Friday? Voice from well: Friday is your day in the well.

In another strip, the boss (a malevolent idiot) tells some flunky he’s being transferred to marketing, but there’s no budget to train him as a marketer.

In the next frame, the boss suddenly smashes the flunky in the face, knocking off his glasses and sending him reeling back on his heels.

Where am I? I need a drink! babbles the woozy flunky. This is a temporary fixbut you’ll fit in now! responds the boss.

Bad news folks! Scott Adams knows our ways, and he doesn’t like us one little bit! In fact, he thinks we’re lushes, con artists and idiots!

So it’s perfect irony that, in the new Dilbert tv spots from Avery Labels, Avery’s ad and marketing people have managed to present a Dilbert environment that is utterly and totally devoid of irony, bite and humor.

This Dilbert stinks. It makes the old Henry comic strip look like a laff riot. Just listen up, gang!

In the first spot, a weekend color comic page layout is animated with the familiar population of Dilbert’s office, who mime the words of a voice-over. The voice-over narrates the spot, does the hard sell, and also puts on the voice of each of the characters as they ‘speak’ their dialogue. (Obviously this is because the Dilbert characters, preoccupied with their success in print, have not yet attended a casting call to be assigned official broadcast voices by their creator.)

So the narrator attacks the script as follows: One busy Monday, Dilbert’s boss decided to save space by setting up bunk cubicles. Everyone was thrilled. ‘Just pretend it’s like bunk beds at camp!’ said Norman, ever the optimist. ‘I hated camp!’ replied Dilbert. You laughing yet? Wait! There’s more!

Let’s just get past the pitch: No matter what’s going on in your office, you can count on Avery Labels to get the job done, first time, every time.

Now for the boffo ending! Dilbert puts on a parachute and jumps out of his bunk cubicle, and the voice-over puts on his Dilbert-sounds-like-this voice and says At least I’m moving up in the organization! Get it? Did you like it?

Now just in case you think that was an aberration, there’s a second spot.

Voice-over: One Friday, Dilbert’s boss said, ‘Whoever can organize this presentation fastest with dazzling indexes and mailing labels will win the prestigious Employee of the Minute Award!’

Then we break for the pitch as before. Now back to the fun! The Boss awards Dilbert a big certificate with a kind of prize steer ribbon on it that ticks, and then goes boing! and self-destructs when the minute’s up.

So the voice-over says Congratulations Dilbert! You’re the Employee of the Minute! Boing! Oops! Time’s up! Thank you! Oh, there’s a closing line. Dilbert’s dog, Dogbert, goes by in an Avery blimp, and the voice-over says Avery. Because you can’t afford to give this stuff a second thought.

Now I’m still sufficiently besotted with the ad biz that I believe gratitude can qualify as your Unique Selling Proposition. That is, if your commercial is moving enough or funny enough or surprising enough, some people will buy the damn stuff just out of sheer appreciation.

Run the Ben Hur chariot race for 60 seconds and tack on a logo. A lot of people are gonna say thanks, I needed that, and buy the product.

Knowing there are millions of rabid Dilbert addicts out there, and lots of them are in charge of buying office supplies, the minds at Avery had to be banking on the Gratitude USP, right?

but the marketing people screwed it up!!! they’ve done the impossible!!! they’ve created a management committee version of dilbert!!! Scott Adams is right. Marketing people are idiots!

Barry Base creates advertising campaigns for a living. He creates this column for fun, and to test the unproven theory that clients who find the latter amusing may also find the former to their liking. Barry can be reached at (416) 924-5533, or faxed at (416) 960-5255, at the Toronto office of Barry Base & Partners.

Off-air dubs reviewed in this column were supplied courtesy of Ad-Watch, a Toronto-based ad monitoring service.