The Ad-Rag advertising blog got white-out slathered on it for posting unauthorized Bic ads.

After posting the mockups, the TBWA ad agency and Bic demanded Ad-Rag remove the images advertising a certain brand of corrective fluid. Furthermore, they required the blog to scrub out all mentions of a trademarked brand name from all the posts and even the comments. Full info here at Ad-Rag.

More of the offending images which you should steal and spread around the net before we’re sued, after the jump…

Creatives will often mock up ads “on spec,” that is, speculatively and without being in a client’s pay, to try out ideas or demonstrate their skills. Here are three such ads exploring what would happen if we used White-Out on important historical events.

9/11

As commentors and Bic and TBWA later pointed out, this isn’t really on-brand for Bic. Ads these days often dramatize one singular product benefit.

Saigon

What’s the benefit here? That white-out type products are good for censorship?

Ninios

While visually dramatic and certainly shocking, the ads fail to communicate the product’s real power. But we don’t think Bic should be so heavy-handed in silencing the fine advertising blog, Ad-Rag.

Perversely, gagging Ad-Rag enacts the very anti-free-speech associations Bic feared the spec ads created.

(Thanks to Klaus!)

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