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Waste Your Saturday With 50 Funny Commercial Parodies
Nerve.com has assembled a list of 50 fake commercials for everything from Tylenol BM (you'll sleep right through your bodily functions!) to the Woomba (it cleans your noony!). There's even some that don't involve body parts, like Lily Tomlin's increasingly agitated housewife hawking "G-r-r-r Detergent" in 1975. Our favorite recent commercial parody that didn't make the list is probably the Jamie Lee Curtis commercial for Activia, because you can never get enough of women eating yogurt. More »
Viral endeavors destined for failure
Mo Rocca Shills For Bank of America
I guess Mo Rocca saw how good John Hodgman did with that whole Apple gig and decided to get a piece of the action himself and hook up with a major corporation for some funny videos. Unfortunately, no one seemed to warn Mo that Bank of America is a little different than Apple. Namely in that people hate Bank of America. Apple: shiny. Bank of America: vile cesspool. Mo seems like a pretty smart guy, so I hope at least he's putting his whore dollars in a credit union. Or at least somewhere better than Bank of America. A pile of dirty socks would suffice.
Mo Rocca On Banking [Official Site]
living green
My first thought when I saw spotted this ad for "360 Vodka : The World's First Eco-Luxury Vodka" was "what the heck is this bullsh*t?" So I took a picture and went online to find out what makes it so good for the environment. For one thing, their website proclaims that their printers and fax machines have been configured print double-sided. Wowie zowie! They say they do lots of other stuff, like use locally grown grains, have a distillery that uses 200% less energy than pot distillers, and the bottle is 85% recycled glass. So that's cool, but I think I'll be sticking with my Smirnoff's triple-distilled for about $10 less (affixed to Vodka360's 100% recycled box is a pricetag for about $31). Have you tried it? Does it taste luxurious, or recycled?
What Makes Vodka360 An "Eco-Luxury" Vodka?
My first thought when I saw spotted this ad for "360 Vodka : The World's First Eco-Luxury Vodka" was "what the heck is this bullsh*t?" So I took a picture and went online to find out what makes it so good for the environment. For one thing, their website proclaims that their printers and fax machines have been configured print double-sided. Wowie zowie! They say they do lots of other stuff, like use locally grown grains, have a distillery that uses 200% less energy than pot distillers, and the bottle is 85% recycled glass. So that's cool, but I think I'll be sticking with my Smirnoff's triple-distilled for about $10 less (affixed to Vodka360's 100% recycled box is a pricetag for about $31). Have you tried it? Does it taste luxurious, or recycled?
urban blight
In 2002, LA banned any new billboards from going up in the city. Since then, an estimated four thousand have been put up by advertising companies who have ignored the law, which obviously the city's billboard inspectors—"a tiny, and some say incredibly inept, group"—have never bothered to enforce.
More »
LA Has 4,000 Illegal Billboards, But City Looks On Helplessly
In 2002, LA banned any new billboards from going up in the city. Since then, an estimated four thousand have been put up by advertising companies who have ignored the law, which obviously the city's billboard inspectors—"a tiny, and some say incredibly inept, group"—have never bothered to enforce.
More »
advertising
Free "You Don't Need It" Stickers
Receive these beautiful stickers by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to:
Steve Lambert/Anti-Advertising Agency
c/o Eyebeam OpenLab
540 W.21st ST.
New York, NY 10011
You Don't Need It - Stickers [Anti-Advertising Agency via Don't Believe The Hypebeast]
Is "plum" poised to supplant pink as the new black? This NYT article, full of quotes from people who shovel bullshit for a living, seems to think so. [NYT]
privacy
Should The Government Set Up A "Do-Not-Track" List?
One of the most popular sentiments expressed by readers on our blog is "be a smart consumer." Now two privacy advocacy organizations are calling for the creation of a "do-not-track" list that would protect registered users from online data collection. They argue that a list is needed because too many consumers won't or can't understand the methods behind online tracking. To illustrate, one of the organizations "pointed to a 2005 University of Pennsylvania survey in which only 25 percent of respondents knew that a Web site having a privacy policy doesn't guarantee that the site refrains from sharing customers' information with companies." But a do-not-track list is overkill, and a fearful reaction against emerging technologies. More »
badvertising
Skyy Tastelessly Tries To Capitalize On Absolut's Mexican Gaffe
Skyy vodka issued a crass press release declaring their support for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in response to an ad from rival Absolut that featured pre-Mexican-American War borders. We had no problem with the ad. We put up a poll. A majority of you had no problem with the ad. Not Skyy, though! They're drunk with outrage and felt compelled to "[decry] Absolut vodka's suggestion to redraw North [America's] map." More »
advertising
Verizon Sues Time Warner Cable Over "Egregiously False" Advertising
Verizon has had enough of Time Warner Cable making fun of their fiber intake and has sued the cable company, claiming that their advertising is "egregiously false" and is causing "immediate and irreparable harm" to Verizon. More »
fine print
TIME's "Subscribe For $1.99" Offer Misleading
First, we want to say thanks to TIME Magazine for naming us one of their top 25 blogs. Now that's out of the way, and we can ask why they're using such a misleading ad on the masthead of their site: "Subscribe to TIME Magazine for just $1.99" it says! Yes, but when you click through to the sign up form, you see that your "subscription" is for six issues—six weeks—and that the fine print indicates you also agree to an auto-renewed fee of $19.95 every six months. We don't mind the $1.99 tryout period, but hiding the real subscription fee in fine print is sneaky. Any magazine with the good taste to recognize our blog should also respect its readers enough to be upfront on the details of its subscription offers.
backlash
Absolut Pulls Controversial Advertisement
Swedish vodka maker, Absolut has pulled a controversial advertisement that showed a map of the United States and Mexico as they were before the Mexican American War. The advertisement read "In An Absolut World." More »
polls
Absolut is running an ad in Mexico that some in this country are finding offensive because it favorably depicts our borders as they existed before the 1848 Mexican-American war. We're going to bite and talk about the ad even though it means that the advertisers win and America dies just a bit more.
More »
Is This Absolut Ad Cheeky Or Distasteful?
Absolut is running an ad in Mexico that some in this country are finding offensive because it favorably depicts our borders as they existed before the 1848 Mexican-American war. We're going to bite and talk about the ad even though it means that the advertisers win and America dies just a bit more.
More »
Want to reduce your Bank of America spam mail? Our commenter tinder posted a link to their opt-out page in our earlier post on Chase spam. [www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/]
spam
How To Get Chase To Stop Sending You Direct Mail Offers Over And Over And Over
Anyone who's a customer of Chase knows how hardcore they can be about direct mail advertising. Martin writes:Over the last 12-24 months, I've been annoyed with about 3-4 mailings a week from Chase for various add-on services and useless products. Already a customer of theirs, I did not appreciate this onslaught of advertising. Here's a quick opt-out website in which you can cancel all direct marketing letters from Chase... dnmoptions.chase.com.More »
unacceptable food
The blogosphere is circulating a link to an awesome German food photography site today, which compares package photos of food with what's inside for around 100 products. Sure, it's all in German, but the Industrial Food Revolution is the same pretty much everywhere. We looked around for a good "secrets of food photography" and found this article at Photocritic which lists some of the staples any good food photographer has at every shoot, including motor oil, cotton balls, and brown shoe polish. Mmm!
More »
Learn The Secrets Of Food Photography
The blogosphere is circulating a link to an awesome German food photography site today, which compares package photos of food with what's inside for around 100 products. Sure, it's all in German, but the Industrial Food Revolution is the same pretty much everywhere. We looked around for a good "secrets of food photography" and found this article at Photocritic which lists some of the staples any good food photographer has at every shoot, including motor oil, cotton balls, and brown shoe polish. Mmm!
More »
scary
Comcast Wants To Use Cameras And Facial Recognition To Serve Ads In Your Living Room
Where's my tinfoil? Comcast's senior VP of user experience, Gerard Kunkel, apparently wants to put a camera in your cable box and use it to serve ads. More »
advertising
