How do you like your Pepsi-Cola? How about David Hasselhoff? This asexually lascivious image leered at Flickr user ‘Downunder Dan’ from atop an Australian billboard and he was compelled to share it with us. Thanks, Dan! Now we can gouge our eyes out in peace and replace them with K.I.T.T’s array of futuristic crime sensors.
advertising
Tats Cru Sprays for Pay in Williamsburg Again
By 2.3.06
The ‘graffiti’ ad for the Hummer H3 by the Bronx-based ‘Tats Cru’ wasn’t well-received. While it started out relatively clean (and nice looking, if we had to be honest), but the residents of the neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, quickly made their feelings about “STREET.ART” known. (Did you know that “Hummer = Death?” We learn from graffiti every day.)
French Use Naked Women To Sell Cheese
By 2.2.06
The French finally have the right idea about something. Shying away from the stuffy pretension the lugubrious Frogs have usually employed to advertise their food stuffs, one sassy mademoiselle is promoting cheese in the way God intended: by photographing various semi-clad French wenches holding plates of camembert in their bras and panties. Can we — the loyal consumers of numerous baguette-spreadable cheeses — do anything less than offer this visionary a tripod salute?
Mind Hacks Asks “Is There A Science To Advertising?”
By 2.2.06
One of my favorite neuroscience blogs, Mind Hacks, is posing an open question on the nature of advertising to their readers. They are looking to fill next month with posts examining whether or not advertising is a science and the psychological implications and effects it has on the clump of electrically-charged gray noodles coagulating in our heads.
Anti-McDonalds Advergame Misses Mark
By 2.2.06
We’re not quite sure what this “anti-advergame” from MolleIndustria is supposed to be teaching us, but here’s what we learned:
- Running a profitable, multinational corporation takes a lot of hard work and skill.
- Hippie, iMac-using, pot-smoking kids don’t respond well to our clown-themed marketing.
- It’s fun to incinerate cows with a flamethrowing robot.
- We could really go for a burger today.
EggFusion: Laser-Etched AdverFood
By 2.2.06
A company named, somewhat predictably, ‘EggFusion,’ is promoting a technique to etch fresh eggs with text with a method that they hope will see adoption from both food suppliers and advertisers. EggFusion uses a laser to burn a layer of text in the egg shell itself, providing a light grey text on white eggs and lightened text on brown eggs. The laser penetrates about 5% of the shell surface, leaving the contents inside unharmed.
Advertising Gone Wrong: What Rhymes with ‘Shoah?’
By 1.31.06
A tip for the future ad sales teams of the newspaper Landeszeitung Luneburg: When running an article commemorating the 61st anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, try not to also run an advertising from a German energy company with the tagline “E.ON provides today for the gas of tomorrow.”
Free Lotion Promotion: “When Chekhov saw the long winter…”
By 1.27.06
How did they know that our fervent dream is to see women immolated in an Hieronymus Bosch-style Tartarus while lofting their skin-care products towards the loathsome titans who hang from the rocky caverns of discontent? Oh, and also one of the demons is a groundhog.
Horrifying Corporate Mascots From Days of Yore
By 1.26.06
There’s a truly horrifying gaggle of monstrous corporate mascots and images over at Plan 59. 1950’s advertising was just plain creepy isn’t new to anyone, but this girl eagerly awaiting for a disembodied hand to finish spreading brains on a slice of cellophane bread, looks as if she can unhinge your jaw and swallow your soul. This proposed barbecue stand resembles an illustration from Ralph Steadman’s Animal Farm. This dish only looks edible if you are Andy Milonakis’ son… until you consider eating someone else’s barf instead. This kid is a leper while a young Michael Berryman eats a plate full of entrails.
AdRants: Haltime Flush, PETA’s Milk Gone Wild, Nail-Biting Bag
By 1.26.06
Ad Rants is a wealth of good stories today, so plucking out just one would be too easy. Our first inclination tilted inevitably towards the puerile, prompted by the strange decision by Scott Toilet Paper to promote the ‘Halftime Flush.’
The Postal Service #1 on iTunes Music Store
By 1.24.06
There’s one good thing to come out of this Apple/The Postal Service flap: It looks like The Postal Service’s Such Great Heights is dominating the iTunes Video store today. At $2 a download, hopefully they’re getting a little money out of the whole deal. (Thanks, ifdu400!)
Apple’s Lifted Video Provokes Band Response
By 1.23.06
We’re a bit behind on this story, but we figured we’d get our finger on it before it got away from us. Apple straight-up ripped off the video for The Postal Service’s song Such Great Heights to promote its use of Intel chips in its new Macs. (The Postal Service is a band, not our U.S. Mail.) Both videos were directed by the same two people, which makes it unquestionably clear that Apple and their ad agency, TBWAChiat Day, intended to clone the video shot-for-shot from the beginning.
Advertising in Schools: How Bad Is It?
By 1.23.06
Having been referred to an article in USA Today about advertising in schools, our initial instinct was the same as Nancy Cox, the quoted president of the Florida PTA, who said, “We are opposed to using children for commercial purposes.” That was the self-inflicted antibodies against indoctrination talking, though, and we quickly shook them off. (And not just because the fruits of child labor are as sweet as child-labor-produced sugar.)
Agency Sells Ads Inside Game Without Creator’s Permission
By 1.19.06
Ars Technica reports on a fascinating Subway ad campaign that took place inside the popular online game Counter-Strike. Apparently the ads for a $2.49 sandwich were injected into the game world with a special bit of ‘mod’ software distributed by an ad agency to certain operators of the server computers on which games of Counter-Strike are hosted. The ad agency paid the server operators to run the mod to give ad impressions in game.
Video Advertisements Coming to a Phone Near You
By 1.17.06
It looks like the relative ad-free environment of your cell phone is about to be populated with advertisments, reports The Times. Verizon and Sprint are said to be testing “short” video ads on their services in March.
For That Ads: Listen to McCann Erickson
By 1.10.06
These aren’t just good ads. They’re good ads about advertising, which is both disgusting and even better.
Movie Theater Ads “More than $50k per screen anually.”
By 1.9.06
There’s not a ton of new information in Ars Technica’s Peek into movie theater economics, but Ken Fisher does manage to pull out a few bits that were new to us.
Click Fraud To Destroy Internet Advertising
By 1.4.06
Remember back before everyone had blogs and everyone had portal or news sites? Back then, even those with Cornelia de Lange Syndrome could use their tiny misshapen hands and three stumpy fingers to Control+V their way to Dot Com millions. Somewhere in the bowels of the Internet, a single person wrote content, and everyone else got rich cut and pasting him, largely through the hysterically over credulous advertising endorsement of companies no longer with us. Man, those were the days.
