After more than 40 years, I have seen my share of industry parodies in both the high-tech and procurement industries. For example, the Tallgrass Technologies “In The Hard Disk Jungle Tallgrass Clears a Path” video had everything in it, including cannibals. I don’t know if referring to cannibals is politically correct these days, but the early 1980s were a different time.
Fast forward from the 1980s to the new Millennium, and here are two campaigns that immediately come to mind.
The Shel Israel Puppet Parody (2008)
This was a famous tech industry controversy from 2008 involving Loren Feldman (of 1938 Media) creating a puppet parody of Shel Israel, a social media expert and author. It is a notable case study in early social media, illustrating how parody can sometimes become more popular than the original content.
Shout out the letters S-A-P like William Shatner delivering his lines in Star Trek, and you will get the picture.
The Ariba For Dummies – Really (2010)
I wish I could say that the image below was a tongue-in-cheek lampooning of an organization whose brand had been somewhat maligned by an unenviable track record of successful implementations (or mis-implementations). After all, wouldn’t the calamitous exploits of a company that, as its CFO put it during a 2009 interview, went through a cultural DNA transformation only to emerge on the other side as a different dog with the same fleas, warrant a quick-fix guide for itself and its clients?
But I digress.
The Procurement Curmudgeon (2025)
It is no small irony that a company, ConvergentIS, which makes everything SAP Ariba (and ERPs in general) work better, elevates the procurement parody from a spirited poke at the foibles of the Enterprise solution players (see above) to a much-needed level of understanding from a practitioner’s point of view. To me, this is what I would call an informed and intelligent parody because there is truth in it that extends well beyond mere “brand promotion.”
Meet The Procurement Curmudgeon.
Granted, there aren’t any cannibals or puppets, but for me it brought a smile to my face, delivered a message, and reminded me how much fun we procurement professionals can have even in a challenging industry.
Procurement Insights
Procurement Curmudgeon Raises The Bar Successfully Combining Parody With An Important Underlying Message
Posted on July 25, 2025
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After more than 40 years, I have seen my share of industry parodies in both the high-tech and procurement industries. For example, the Tallgrass Technologies “In The Hard Disk Jungle Tallgrass Clears a Path” video had everything in it, including cannibals. I don’t know if referring to cannibals is politically correct these days, but the early 1980s were a different time.
Fast forward from the 1980s to the new Millennium, and here are two campaigns that immediately come to mind.
The Shel Israel Puppet Parody (2008)
This was a famous tech industry controversy from 2008 involving Loren Feldman (of 1938 Media) creating a puppet parody of Shel Israel, a social media expert and author. It is a notable case study in early social media, illustrating how parody can sometimes become more popular than the original content.
Shout out the letters S-A-P like William Shatner delivering his lines in Star Trek, and you will get the picture.
The Ariba For Dummies – Really (2010)
I wish I could say that the image below was a tongue-in-cheek lampooning of an organization whose brand had been somewhat maligned by an unenviable track record of successful implementations (or mis-implementations). After all, wouldn’t the calamitous exploits of a company that, as its CFO put it during a 2009 interview, went through a cultural DNA transformation only to emerge on the other side as a different dog with the same fleas, warrant a quick-fix guide for itself and its clients?
But I digress.
The Procurement Curmudgeon (2025)
It is no small irony that a company, ConvergentIS, which makes everything SAP Ariba (and ERPs in general) work better, elevates the procurement parody from a spirited poke at the foibles of the Enterprise solution players (see above) to a much-needed level of understanding from a practitioner’s point of view. To me, this is what I would call an informed and intelligent parody because there is truth in it that extends well beyond mere “brand promotion.”
Meet The Procurement Curmudgeon.
Granted, there aren’t any cannibals or puppets, but for me it brought a smile to my face, delivered a message, and reminded me how much fun we procurement professionals can have even in a challenging industry.
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