Live healthy, drink Coke?

"

These just showed up on Ads Of The World, credited to  ATHOS\TBWA in Bolivia. Copy says, "A sedentary lifestyle kills like any disease. Change your life for your own life."

The file names indicate that they're some sort of partnership with Bolivia's health ministry, but they are branded only with the Coca-Cola logo and no call to action.

Spec? I don't know. The whole thing is just so wrong on every level. Health authorities partnering with Coke? Coke telling people to get off their asses? That font? THAT FONT?!?!

Gap makes love out of hate

Via HuffPo

A Gap ad, featuring American actor and jewelry designer Waris Ahluwalia, was recently defaced by some racist in the NYC subway:

Via Arsalan Iftikhar (Twitter)

Gap actually responded quite well to the notification. First, they asked to know where the defaced ad was spotted (presumably to have it fixed without delay). Then they made their support of the Sikh community even more visible, placing the ad their feature image on both Twitter and Facebook.

The response has been phenomenal. A grassroots "Thank You, Gap" campaign has sprung up on Facebook and Twitter. Mr. Ahluwalia himself posted this pic on his own account:

Love wins, this time, on the social media battlefield.

IKEA gives in once again to intolerant international markets

Just over a year ago, IKEA Photoshopped adult women out of its Saudi catalogue. Now they've removed an interview with a same-sex couple in the Russian edition of their magazine.

According to The Independent:

The December edition of the furniture giant’s magazine, which is distributed across the world, features an interview with Clara and Kirsty, a Dorset-based lesbian couple, talking about their family life and their Ikea-filled interiors. 

However the lengthy feature has been spiked from the Russian edition of “Ikea Family Live” in case it failed to comply with Russian’s controversial new law banning “homosexual propaganda”. It has been replaced with an article about a single Chinese designer named Chao.

The article cites an IKEA spokesperson confirming that the cxompany was complying with a Russian law benning dissemination of “homosexual propaganda among minors”.

Queerty, in calling out the big bog retailer for complicity in the Russia's "gay purge", suggested the following alternatives for IKEA:

• Leave the lesbians in but don’t identify them as lesbians, since some representation is better than nothing
• Pledge to donate a portion of their Russian revenue to global LGBT civil rights initiatives
• Publicly denounce the clearly unconscionable law
• Troll the homophobes by filling the catalog exclusively with lesbians

They also threw this Italian ad in the store's big yellow and blue face:

"We are open to all families"

Mainstream media claim a boycott is afoot, but I'm not seeing too much noise yet. However, there was one IKEA "kiss-in" in Brooklyn that is rather sweet.

The most naked ad I've ever seen is refreshingly unperverted

According to the evolution of public lice, humans and our ancestors have been wearing some sort of clothing for up to 3.3 million years. But this mythological reimagining of the dawn of pants is a little less icky.

I didn't count them, but prepare yourself for a multitude of swinging penises. And twice as many bared breasts. (Although I suspect some of the women in the ad concealed their nether parts behind merkins.)



The short film, called "Studies On Hysteria", is sponsored content for Colorado Denim. It was a project by three German student directors, Matthias Bäuerle, Gabriel Borgetto, Bernd Faaß, from Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.

It was shot at two open-air museums, which presented some logistical problems, according to this interview:

Since we were shooting with a naked cast, the managers of the museum didn’t want us to interfere with the school classes visiting on a daily basis. Hence, we could only shoot outside in the early morning and in the late afternoon when the museum was closed. However, due to a timing mistake, we were still shooting when the first grade school class passed by our set. I think they weren’t shocked too much, but the teachers wanted to call the cops… Fortunately they didn’t see us shooting the scene in the church.

The actors, apparently, are mostly real-life nudists who were recruited from online naturist communities. And I think that's why this thing ends up being entirely OK in my book. The nudity is equal, it's natural, and it's funny.

H/T Adrants

Everything that's wrong with male sexuality, in one ad campaign

The image of sex as something that a man "does" to a woman is part of the problem in the global conversation about sexuality. And this campaign for a Thai "natural sexual enhancement" is a really painful reflection of that.

Just look at the fantasy presented by the three ads. They portray the woman as a passive vessel of the man's big penis (stallion), sexual strength (bull) and constant desire (rabbit). 

The woman, let us note, is faceless and on her knees to receive the man's mighty dong in the least intimate way possible. She's not really participating at all.

What do women really want in bed? Each individual's mileage may vary, but it's easy enough to find out how male insecurities about penile performance and porn culture are ruining good old-fashioned hetero sex:

From Men's Health:

The biggest problem with large penises, the women say, is that they're often attached to even bigger dicks. 

"There's nothing worse than a guy who thinks he has a HUGE penis and is therefore God's gift to the ladies," Beland says. "That kind of guy thinks that getting an erection is pretty much all the effort he has to put into sex. The chances that the women he sleeps with are having orgasms? Slim to none."

From Psychology Today:

In survey after survey, women, especially young women, complain that men, especially young men, make love in a manner that's too rushed, too mechanical, and too narrowly focused on women's breasts and genitals. In many women's experience, too many men view sex as a headlong plunge into intercourse. That's porn-style sex. It can be summed up by the phrase, "wham, bam, thank you, ma'am."

From this forum:

Most women need more than five minutes of foreplay before they are turned on and ready for sex. Don't rush things. If you want a hot woman who acts like a porn star in bed, you need to be prepared to spend some time getting her to that place. It's ideal if you enjoy getting her there as well.

This campaign seems to be aimed at men whose only sex education has come from masturbating furiously to online pornography. And not even "good" porn.

All I have left to say about this, as a man, is "ugh!" If this is the ideal of being a straight dude in bed, I'd rather be a lesbian trapped in a man's body.*

H/T Ads of The World

*Sorry if my quip comes off as trivializing gay women's complex sexuality. That's not the intention. I'm just pissed off at my own category right now.

Thanksgiving tanning ad thanks Native Americans for their "sexy color"

I'm almost speechless. Almost.

The Daily Mail quotes David Arnett, Marketing Director at Alabama tanning salon Club Sun Color Studios"

"We are all Americans no matter what color we are. Just because we promote a nice tan doesn't mean we are racist. 

This was an in house ad that was never intended to be taken as racist or insensitive. We were merely trying to compliment the beautiful skin "color" of Native Americans."

Mr. Arnett also claims to be Native American, which seems to have become the new "I have black friends" or "my uncle is Jewish" of refusing to apologize for casual racism.

The promotional image is no longer on their site.

Begun, the Rob Ford parody ads have

Toronto Sun

It's too bad this one is not very funny. While Mayor Ford's bizarre statements and behaviour are fair fodder, as far as I'm concerned, his weight and alleged substance abuse problems are more problematic material.

According to the Toronto Sun, who snapped this screencap:

A cheeky American budget airline swears it wasn’t smoking crack when it offered cheap airfare Thursday, including a $29.90 one-way ticket to the Toronto region. 

Spirit Airlines assured fliers in an online ad that they don’t smoke the illegal drug Mayor Rob Ford has recently confessed to using, in a bid to sell ultra-low airfare including a $29.90 one-way ticket to the Niagara Falls, NY airport.

The capture is dated November 14. It seems to have been removed from their site.

Literal "Food Porn" promotes Guide des Restos 2014

My oh my! Reader Cassandria sent me this naughty foodie campaign by Publicis  for a Quebec restaurant guide, shot by Leda & St. Jacques.

ufunk explains (translated) that it's "a rather naughty and risqué poster campaign playing on the ambiguity of the" 18 + "for its 18th edition."

I have no idea why my social media friends would think of me when they saw this...

The only problem is see is that some of them are rather contrived. The concept has been done before, without so much awkward manipulation required. Hell, I would have loaned them this heirloom carrot if they'd asked.

Is it ever a good time to make light of #hunger in advertising?

If any of your Facebook friends are fans of Snickers Canada, you've probably seen this in your feed:

It's a Facebook App that invites you to look into a camera, and have your face turned into a "hungry" version of yourself:

Do we see anything problematic here? There's hunger on our streets. In the north. In the third world. In catastrophe-ravaged places like the Philippines.

When Snickers did the "You're not you when you're hungry" TV ads, they were funny because of the celebrities and the slice-of-life context.

This campaign, however, takes you down into a dank, prison-like environment where you are faced with a "machine" that will make you into a starving wretch:

And it didn't even work!

No, this is not consciousness-raising of world hunger. It is really insensitive candy marketing.

Despite this:

At Mars we take our responsibility for marketing our brands appropriately very seriously. 

Yeah, right.

British ad: "Had a bad day at work? Get drunk!"

My friend Neil Hopkins shared this ad on G+ with the comment:

There's such a cultural issue here in the UK with alcohol and workplace stress, this slightly beggars my belief...

Mine, too. No matter how true it may be, it's not exactly responsible liquor advertising. I have the feeling the ASA will be getting a call about this.

john st. Creatives want the world to know Toronto is #MORETHANFORD

The Rob Ford saga has continues to provide the world with its recommended daily allowance of Schadenfreude as the elected Mayor of Toronto vows to keep his position despite admissions that he bought and smoked crack in office, having had numerous lies to Council exposed, misuse of City funds, and accusations of being a dangerous boozer and a general nasty guy.

Poor Toronto. In terms of municipal PR, Mayor Ford is worse than SARS. But somehow I doubt the Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Rush will come to the aid of the shamed megacity.

Its advertising community, however, has. Two art directors at john st., Hannah Smit and Marie Richer, have slapped together an online campaign, #MORETHANFORD, to show all the things about Toronto that don't revolve around the Mayor in a drunken stupor:

According to The Globe and Mail:

The women spent two days asking everyone around them what they love about the city, and then scoured video sharing sites YouTube and Vimeo looking for footage that represented those examples. They then edited together a compilation, set to the song Live in this City by Toronto musicians Dragonette. (Every video sampled is credited and linked to in the description, and Ms. Smit says they have not had complaints from anyone asking not to be part of it.) 

The website asks people to tweet things they love about Toronto, or to even allow the campaign access to their Twitter accounts to send out messages more widely. It also tracks which hashtag is winning, in terms of the amount of conversation on Twitter: #RobFord or #MoreThanFord. It’s an imperfect measure of course, since many of the people talking about Ford are not on Twitter, or even on Twitter are using different hashtags such as #TOpoli or no hashtags at all. But it’s not meant to be scientific: the message of the campaign is about starting a new conversation, Ms. Smit said.

Not an exciting video, being a montage and all, but I feel their pain. I live in Ottawa. Being branded by bad politics is nothing new to me.

See more at the campaign site..

Catholic girls' school promotes a spiritual "feminism"

AdFreak's Rebecca Cullers shared this nifty campaign from Mercy Academy, "a tiny, all-female Catholic college-prep academy in Kentucky."

She writes,

What's most remarkable is that a Catholic preparatory school is taking a view of women's education that doesn't end in a prince. Lord have mercy, but Mercy Academy has a progressive view on women's role in the world.

Perhaps this shouldn't be so shocking. Despite continuing to officially refuse women in its priestly ranks, or to allow them to use medical methods of reproductive choice, the Catholic Church does have a radical side.

Pope Francis, in particular, has been outspoken in his insistence that the Church serve the poor and not waste its time worrying about gay people — and maybe some of its other policies as well.

The school is run by the Sisters of Mercy of America.

Mercy Academy believes that, "the prime responsibility of each student is to learn how to learn and think critically" Their goal is "a self-motivated learner who is interested in expanding her knowledge and who is capable of applying what she knows to human problems."

Sounds pretty good to me, in principle, no matter what you believe.

Toys 'R' Us: Screw nature, buy more toys!

My kid loves nature. It didn't happen entirely by accident. While he comes by it honestly, surrounded by interesting Canadian landscape, flora and fauna, I've also done a lot of work to encourage this interest. By getting a kid to understand nature, you build an understanding of the more practical issues behind environmentalism.

That's why I think this Toys 'R' Us ad (from last summer) is really unfortunate:

If I had seen this on The Simpsons, I would have appreciated it as ironic commentary on how we teach our kids to want an endless supply of stuff. That's what made that show great — that it showed us our bad side with humour and understanding. But it acknowledged that it was, indeed, bad.

This, on the other hand, is not satire. It is an ad for a toy store. That tells kids (and parents) that buying a bunch of foreign-produced plastic shit destined for our landfills is better than learning about trees that just stand around making oxygen.

I'll take my Christmas spending somewhere else.

h/t Huffington Post

The problem of retro brand racism

Via CBC

When I was a kid, this kind of stereotyping on native people was simply part of the landscape. We had "Indian" costumes, wallets, fake tomahawks and plastic soldiers. And the brands around us reflected this casual racism.

But the potato chip packaging above is not from the 1970s. Krispy Kernels snack foods, of Quebec, decided to reintroduce their old packaging as a "vintage edition," according to the CBC.

Vintage bag, via Yum Yum

Interestingly, the old design was in use until 1990, when the Oka Crisis forced a more sensitive re-evaluation of Aboriginal issues in Canada.

While there is a certain value in recognizing how much things have changed in the past few decades, the ironic use of such a stereotype for marketing purposes seems at best misguided and at worst ignorantly racist.

It gets even worse: The company has an in-store contest that encourages people to take pictures of theor faces in a standee of a loinclothed "little Indian":

Both images via CJAD

Upon launch, Valérie Jalbert, CEO of Yum Yum Chips and Krispy Kernels, and Renee-Maude Jalbert, marketing director of Yum Yum Chips , happily posed with the campaign for La Presse.

Irkar Beljaars, a Montreal-based Mohawk journalist, told the CBC:

“It's just like ‘look at that, I'm pretending to be an Indian. You're just perpetuating racial stereotypes. You're just continuing to mock us by doing things like this.”

Interestingly, Krispy Kernels claims the packaging is a nod to the legendary founder of the potato chip (disputed), who was Native American:

It all began one August night when a customer, offended by the greasy taste of his french-fried potatoes, sent them back to the kitchen. Chef George Crum, who was of Native American descent (which inspired the Yum Yum logo), was equally offended by this return. Averse to criticism, Crum decided to seek revenge and furiously chopped up a new batch of potatoes. Slicing them as thin as paper, he threw them in a boiling hot oil-filled fryer and removed them once crisp and golden. He then seasoned them heavily and served his dish to the picky patron.

The company said the caricature on the package is a return to the company's roots, and is not meant to be mocking.

The campaign page has since been taken down.

Ms Marvel gets a multicultural makeover

1977 (via comicbookcatacombs)

Begun as a rather problematic response to second-wave feminism, Ms. Marvel was a superhero who embodied "modern woman's quest for raised consciousness, for self-liberation, for identity" — while wearing very tight and revealing clothes.

2006 (Wikimedia) You don't even want to know about the fan art versions.

That's right. Blonde, blue-eyed and buxom, she was a reminder that inside many male comic book artists is a furiously masturbating 13-year-old boy.

But there's a new Ms. Marvel in town:

Kamala Khan is "a 16-year-old high school student who lives in Jersey City with her Pakistani immigrant parents," according to AlJazeera and represents the first Muslim lead character in a Marvel comic series.

Fatemeh Fakhraie, the founder of Muslimah Media Watch, applauded the move. "She is going to be a window into the American Muslim experience," she said. "A lot of us are bumping up against that the idea that a lot of America is white, while that isn't what America is, we're not all white and Christian."

The best thing about this move is that it appears to be an attempt to move beyond the token ethnic stereotypes of 70s superheroes like Power Man. The character is inspired by the authentic experiences of Marvel editor Sana Amanat growing up as a Pakistani Muslim-American.

Sana Amanat (left) Via Marvel Comics

The character was further developed by writer G. Willow Wilson, who is herself a Muslim convert. She told Patheos.com:

"Her religion is an integral part of who she is, and that is obvious right away. But she is not a poster child (for Islam). I’ve been wearing hijab for ten years, but I wanted to make her representative of Muslim woman at large, and the majority does not wear hijab. She is not perfect, and she doesn’t ascribe to perfection. She’s kind of shy geek girl who kind of has artsy interests. A big part of her life is trying to balance the demands of her faith with the realities of being a teenager. An interesting side story is that one of her best friends just started to wear hijab in the book and is getting more serious about the religion."

It will be interesting to watch this move by Marvel filter through American society. Conan O’Brien already got a taste of controversy when he made a stupid joke about the character on Twitter. Stephen Colbert, on the other hand, got a pass for doing much the same thing — but in strawman character.

Bowie shills for fa-fa-fa-fa-fashion in epically pretentious Louis Vuitton ad

Nobody sells out like David Bowie sells out. The man appeared in his first ad before his career even took off. At the height of his art rocker cred in the '70s, he was writing music for TV ads. And then, of course, came the '80s. And finally, this.

As an elder statesman of Baby Boomer cool, Bowie is back on the shill train. This time, it's with a harpsichord remix of one of his new songs in an incredibly decadent ad for  Louis Vuitton:



Directed by Romain Gavras, and featuring model Arizona Muse, it's basically an ad for purses. Very expensive purses.

This version of "I'd Rather Be High" is one of the bonus tracks on a new, expanded release of Bowie's comeback album.

This Finnish milk ad has to be fake, right?

This rather awkward image showed up recently on Buzzfeed. It's been floating around Reddit for over a year. It can be traced back to here. Any better ideas as to provenance? 

UPDATE: Word on the social media street is that it's student work. My friend Evan also sent me this Italian link that included some much worse dairy ads from there:

"Nurse yourselves"

"The beautiful things of summer"

"Races of scamorze" (It's a soft cheese)

How far can Justin Trudeau push his female appeal?

There's no denying Canadian Liberal leader Justin Trudeau's charisma. He's got his dad's name and his mom's looks. He's young. (Well, younger than me, anyway.) And he is riding high in the polls on trendy issues like legalizing pot.

Women, in particular, like Justin. I can still recall a Millennial woman colleague getting all "twitterpated" when he sat behind us on a train to Montreal.

All of these factors make the promotional poster above, from the Liberal site, for a "ladies' event" fundraiser, a no-brainer. But that's kind of the problem.

One part rock star politician, one part "hey girl" meme, this promotion is not subtle about using sex appeal to position Justin as a champion of women's issues. But will it work?

Maybe. But that won't stop me for calling it out on placing style and stereotypes over substance.

Thanks to Kayren M. for the tip.

Headphone company's curvy tribute to a porn lord

Via Ads of The World

Ho-hum! More female sexuality used to sell something unrelated. But at least this one tries a little harder, and has a reason behind it.

Here's the backstory, via LA Graphic Design:

Our favorite headphone company AIAIAI made this brilliant ad for Vice Magazine  - who presented them with the challenge of producing an ad for their magazine which was dedicated to Bob Guccione – the founder of “men’s” magazine Penthouse. 

Not great work, but eye-catching.

Advertising people are abnormal

They say the worst mistake a marketer can make is to think he or she is just like the target audience. That's mostly because we can't look at ads without deconstructing them, we think that social media buzz is way more important than it really is, and we value breakthrough ideas over easy results.

Here are some other weird things about my people, via Lowe Roche in Toronto:



In this case, ad people are the target audience, landing this agency video on Adfreak where we'll all see it. Some of the stats hit pretty close to home.

It's just too bad they screwed up their poutine:

Shredded cheese? Abomination.

McRib: More comebacks than The Who

McRib is back. Again. And McDonald's Canada is celebrating its return with a rock 'n' roll theme. On the McRib Comeback Tour page, there's a McRib song, merchandise, and other stuff.

It was obviously inspired by The Who's habit of repeated comebacks. The McRib, after all, was first introduced the year The Who first called it quits. Considering the remaining members of the who plan to retire "for real" in 2015, I wonder which act has more staying power?

This is how you look for work, kids #HireStephan

It's been done before, but there was something about the picture in the targeted Facebook ad that made me click.

Stephan Bociurkiw is a recent graduate of the University of Alberta School of business. And he has made himself the most elaborate "hire me!" site I have seen in some time:

He's definitely no copywriter ("thinking outside the box"?) but the kid has moxie. Time to up your game, students.