As information worsens, the potential for comedy rises.
Nobody understands this inverse relationship higher than the group behind The Onion, which has channeled at present’s dystopian political slide into banger headlines (“Trump Spends Whole U.Ok. Journey Making an attempt To Determine Out The place He Is aware of Prince Andrew From”). The information website has attracted almost 54,000 subscribers since its relaunch final yr, and is on observe to generate $6 million in income in 2025, in response to The Wall Road Journal.
Which is why it appeared notably comical when, in Might, the satirical information outlet issued a press release asserting a “foray into promoting” so as to “broaden its market dominance.” Firms might enlist writers at The Onion for inventive tasks, as a result of “nothing—not spouses, not youngsters, not fragile aged mother and father—issues extra . . . than serving to manufacturers inform their tales.”
It appeared like a basic Onion spoof of capitalism and company jargon. However for as soon as, The Onion was not doing a bit. Or a minimum of we don’t suppose it was.
The Onion has launched what it’s describing as a “technique and inventive company” that operates adjoining to, but distinct from, the publication. Referred to as America’s Best—named for The Onion’s tagline, “America’s Best Information Supply”—the company is avowedly not a gag. But it gleefully satirizes itself in its personal press launch and social media posts.
For The Onion, the company represents a possibility to create a brand new income stream: offering company shoppers with copy that’s contemporary, humorous, and written by precise writers, to face out from AI slop. America’s Best at present has between 5 and ten shoppers, and has performed work for Paramount, an ETF fund, and a nonprofit.
It’s “comedy, however packaged as a model message,” says The Onion’s chief marketing officer, Leila Brillson.
The Onion’s CEO, Ben Collins, sees no draw back to the hassle, “until we begin working with ICE and Raytheon,” he says.
‘The Onion’ launches an Company
The Onion has been lampooning the information for nearly 40 years, working basic headlines like “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job” following Obama’s election, and “‘No Approach To Forestall This,’ Says Solely Nation The place This Usually Occurs,” after numerous mass shootings. A shocking new coalition took over the website in April 2024, led by former NBC Information reporter Collins, who pledged as the brand new CEO to present the writers more creative freedom. The publication relaunched a print version in August 2024; Collins reported not too long ago that it “is now the now the thirteenth largest print newspaper in the US by subscribers, on an inventory proper between the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune, and rising quick.”
Brillson, who beforehand labored in advertising and marketing at Disney, Netflix, and Bumble, after which ran her personal company, says that it was she who’d “ushered by way of” the company thought. “I don’t need to say that there have been naysayers,” she says of her preliminary pitch, “however lots of people didn’t absolutely perceive what it regarded like till it was up and working.”
The idea of an company dwelling inside a media firm is hardly new—The New York Instances’s T Model Studio and The Washington Put up’s WP Inventive Group have been working customized content material divisions since 2014 and 2021 respectively, creating tales that will appear to be commonplace articles however are actually advertising and marketing for manufacturers (and acknowledged as such).
The Onion itself used to do one thing related. Its earlier homeowners, G/O Media, ran an in-house company referred to as Onion Labs from 2013 to 2019, which produced adverts for manufacturers reminiscent of Mr. Peanut and Whitecastle. It generated the sort of sponsored content material that mirrored Onion tales, together with adverts that ran on The Onion‘s personal web site.
It was no small operation. At one level, Brillson says, 30 individuals labored for this full-service studio that had video capability, which was expensive to keep up. “We merely don’t dwell in that market anymore,” Brillson says.
America’s Best operates in a different way. It produces copy for every part from social media posts to billboard adverts—however The Onion performs no half in internet hosting or distributing the work. “Persons are like, ‘Will The Onion write about this?’ And we’ve got to say, no,” Brillson says. “We now have a fairly robust separation of church and state.”
Marnie Shure, the previous managing editor of The Onion who now works as inventive producer for America’s Best, explains that “we’re not essentially attempting to make everyone sound like The Onion.” And whereas video capabilities exist, the main focus is “extra tightly on copy, content material, and technique.”
To that finish, The Onion is commissioning former writers. Louisa Kellogg, a senior workers author from 2015 to 2018, now accepts company assignments as they arrive in, and as they go well with her schedule. Her first project, in October 2024, was a marketing campaign for The Onion itself, writing pretend testimonials from subscribers. She now writes copy for exterior shoppers.
Comedy writers for rent
The corporate put out the ambiguous press asserting America’s Best in Might; at present, America’s Best has a group of roughly eight writers, particularly ones who don’t dwell in Chicago, together with the L.A.-based Kellogg.
Residing close to the The Onion’s Chicago headquarters is without doubt one of the information outlet’s inflexible guidelines for editorial staffers, however it “has left some ‘Corridor of Famers’ on the market within the wilderness,” Collins says. America’s Best is a means for Onion administration to assist writers throughout a shaky time, within the aftermath of the writers’ strike, COVID, and the L.A. fires. “We needed to present them an opportunity to make some hire,” he says, “and use among the world’s finest comedy writers who in any other case must be writing for Colbert. However that present is useless now.”
America’s Best copywriters use the identical system they did within the Onion newsroom: finest joke wins. “That very deliberate course of, honed for nearly 40 years, is one thing you’ll be able to apply to tasks,” Shure says, “even when the undertaking is just not a satirical newspaper.” Since they’re distant, Kellogg says writers typically e-mail of their jokes (the advert copy), and Shure chooses the winner. The important thing distinction is that it’s not simply the punchline, but in addition the shopper temporary, that can decide the victor.
Purchasers like the true writing—an antidote to the “AI-generated slop that’s being introduced as promoting proper now,” Collins says—and the truth that it may be comical. “Advertisements simply aren’t humorous anymore, and it’s a illness,” he says. “I can’t bear in mind the final time I laughed at an commercial.”
‘For those who can’t beat ‘em, be a part of ‘em’
A lot of America’s Best’s early shoppers are within the leisure realm: the company has written for Paramount, together with for The Bare Gun, which did nicely in theaters this summer season as R-rated comedies have floundered in recent times. (The company is hesitant to determine different film and TV shoppers: “They don’t need to admit that they delegate out copywriting to anyone else,” Collins says.)
Different shoppers have included nonprofits such Subversive ETFs, a fund that invests in fairness securities of publicly traded corporations—particularly ones that, public disclosures point out, sitting U.S. Congress members have invested in. America’s Best created copy for social media and for posters that have been not too long ago wheatpasted round New York Metropolis that learn: “This shouldn’t be authorized. Congress trades on inside data . . . However in case you can’t beat ’em, be a part of ’em.”
The company additionally works on occasions. It threw an off-beat social gathering at SXSW for Venture Liberty, a nonprofit, based by billionaire govt Frank McCourt, aiming to create a “people-powered web” by shifting management of information to people. (America’s Best wrote the speeches, too.) It additionally helped throw a celebration in September for Mexican sports activities retailer Culto, themed across the “cult” of soccer as a faith (it featured a ball that predicted the long run, amongst different curiosities).
“Folks come to us understanding they’re going to get some unhinged stuff and could be made uncomfortable,” Collins says. Some shoppers have turned down copy pitches, Brillson says, as a result of they have been “too bizarre for them.”
Parodying LinkedIn from the within, however nonetheless for actual
One problem America’s Best could face because it grows is sustaining its signature voice whereas convincing potential shoppers that the entire thing isn’t a gag. The agency’s new LinkedIn feed, for instance, options refreshingly facetious posts about capitalism—“You don’t need to be in your deathbed questioning in case you might’ve delivered extra worth to your shoppers”—alongside extra earnest posts, just like the invitation to the Culto occasion: “I might love to ask you of us to return hang around with us. Lemme know right here if you wish to social gathering!”
Collins reassures me that it isn’t, in reality, a joke. “The whole lot involving The Onion, the primary intuition is: it’s a bit,” he says. That was true when it introduced the rerelease of the print paper, or the bid to buy InfoWars from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. But in some way, I nonetheless surprise.
Collins finds this ambiguity enjoyable to play with. “It’s a wierd solution to run a enterprise the place you’re simply continuously having to inform individuals every part you’re doing is actual, truly.”
