It's a water bottle. That tracks how much you drink, and glows when you need to drink more. As well as telling your smartphone.
The very earnest start-up, the new-agey feel of the intro, and the over-the-top testimonials all seem like some kind of sophisticated social commentary on the times we live in. But it's apparently a real thing, and people have put up over $80,000 to back it on Kickstarter.
If you look closely at the "rewards" section, it's clear that Kickstarter is being used to pre-sell the bottles. For about $45 a pop.
It's sickly amusing to me that so many people would be willing to pay almost fifty bucks for a bottle that reminds you to drink it. (And it's not even full of single-malt Scotch.)
I guess there is, literally, a sucker born every minute.
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?!?!
Pepsi has long had a close relationship with "pop" stars: David Bowie, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson (before his hair caught on fire)... and show can forget this conspicuous consumption of advertising budget?
It just seemed natural that musical celebrities would go for the big sponsorship money. But suddenly, things are changing.
In an open letter to the singer, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and six partners compares today's soft drink celebrity endorsements to the cigarette ads of yore: "'Drink Pepsi and you can be cool like Katy Perry,' is the takeaway message for your young fans. 'Live for now' and worry about the health consequences later."
They also produced this video:
I'm no fan of pushing too much sugar on kids. But have these people ever seen a Katy Perry video?
There it is, in all its oddly-centred, fake-ad-looking headline glory.
I'll quote the body copy in full:
For over 127 years, people have been coming together over Coca-Cola products to refresh, to celebrate, and to enjoy a moment with something they love. One reason why is that people have always been able to trust the quality of our products and everything that goes into them.
That’s something that will never change.
But changing with the times and people’s tastes is something we’ve always done. Today, that means offering more great-tasting, low- and no-calorie choices. And while nearly everyone can agree that providing choices to help people manage the calories they take in is a good thing, we understand that some people have questions about the use of low- and no-calorie sweeteners.
Our use of high-quality, low- and no-calorie sweeteners, including aspartame, allows us to give people great-tasting options they can feel good about. Time and again, these low- and no-calorie sweeteners have shown to be safe, high-quality alternatives to sugar. In fact, the safety of aspartame is supported by more than 200 studies over the last 40 years.*
Today, we’re proud to offer a wide range of Coca-Cola products that fit different people’s life- styles. Because we believe that when people come together with more choices that are right for them, good things happen.
For more information, including third-party studies on the benefits and safety of low- and no-calorie sweeteners, go to beverageinstitute.org
*International Food Information Council Foundation. 2011. Everything You Need to Know About Aspartame. Magnuson, B.A., et al. 2007. Aspartame: A safety evaluation based on current use levels, regulations, and toxicological and epidemiological studies. Crit Rev Toxicol. 37: 629_727. Aspartame is safe for use by nearly all populations. The only exception is people born with phenylketonuria (PKU) who cannot metabolize phenylalanine. But, this does not mean aspartame is unsafe for other consumers.
Ad Age says the campaign will run in USA Today in Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Chicago Tribune. Then again, media buys are just proof it's a real ad. Many more people will see it online.
Ad Age also quotes a Coke news release:
"We believe there is a real opportunity to bring people together to educate them about low- and no- calorie sweeteners. Low- and no-calorie sweeteners offer a great way for people to manage their calories while still enjoying the sweet taste that they love. We understand, though, that some people have questions about these ingredients, especially aspartame. We felt it was important for us to answer these questions and reinforce that these are ingredients people can feel good about."
I'll try not to write anything I could get sued for. I'll just say that, as a parent, I do not believe "diet" soft drinks are a healthy choice for me or for my son, and we will not have them in our house. We promote drinking water as the #1 thirst quencher for him, followed by milk and limited fruit juice. We even allow the occasional sweetened "pop" in the house, but prefer real sugar over corn syrup. That's just us.
Intuitively, people choose non-caloric artificial sweeteners over sugar to lose or maintain weight. Sugar provides a large amount of rapidly absorbable carbohydrates, leading to excessive energy intake, weight gain, and metabolic syndrome. Sugar and other caloric sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup have been cast as the main culprits of the obesity epidemic. Whether due to a successful marketing effort on the part of the diet beverage industry or not, the weight conscious public often consider artificial sweeteners “health food”. But do artificial sweeteners actually help reduce weight?
Surprisingly, epidemiologic data suggest the contrary. Several large scale prospective cohort studies found positive correlation between artificial sweetener use and weight gain.
They didn't claim is was good for you. They just said it was "safe" and that you can "feel good about it". If you want a better look at their arguments and sources, there's a handy infographic at their advocacy site.
As a parting thought, however, I wonder if drawing attention to the issue is going to backfire.
Jean-Yves Beaudoin, assistant marketing manager, Molson Coors, says that the campaign is different for the brand because it’s aimed more at a mindset and a lifestyle than a demographic.
“‘Guyet’ is a way of life. It’s not about indulging in crappy food all the time, it’s about exercising properly so you can rationalize eating things you love, like burgers with bacon,” he says of the insight behind the campaign.
Which is the way lots of us live, but why brand it just for men? Lots of women I know like burgers and beer, and still try to balance their intake with healthy activity.
The obvious answer is that it's not an easy sell to get guy's guys to be seen drinking lower-calorie beer. At least, that's how I deconstruct the challenge given to the creative team at Rethink.
The key line: "This isn't some diet — and this isn't some diet beer"
Presumably, they have research to show that the men they want to sell to don't want to admit to being on a "diet" or drinking "light beer". Instead, they exercise hard and eat hearty, while drinking a lower-cal beer that in no way compromises their masculinity.
Pretty strategic advertising, actually. Even if it doesn't have the most progressive take on gender.
That seems to be the message behind this ad for a hamburger made with beef, bacon and "rendered pancetta"and topped with bacon and prosciutto, and served on a bacon bun.
According to Burger Business, this $12 monstrosity is being offered by California chain Slater's 50/50 (the name is a reference to all their patties being half beef and half ground bacon). As the copy promises, if the Mayan apocalypse is coming, you might as well eat whatever you feel like.
Worst case scenario, you die with a belly full of salt and grease. Best case, you have to live with it.
The front cover shows Dutch Boy, carrying his paint bucket, being greeted by a toy lead soldier, a shoe, a plate and a light bulb. The back cover features a hand that has made a broad brush stroke with the admonition "'Save the surface and you save all'; Paint & Varnish". The front inside cover contains the copyright information; the back inside cover features a seated Dutch Boy (the Dutch Boy trademark) and locations of company offices in the United States. The first page shows the Dutch Boy talking to the lead soldier; it is followed by 14 images--7 in color and 7 in outline--of items that use lead. Items include a light bulb (lead glass), shoes and baseballs (lead in the rubber), and a bullet (entirely made of lead). Each outlined image was to be filled in using the complementary color image at its side as a guide. Some of the images have been filled in using watercolor. There are four perforated tabs at the end of the book--probably where the Color Harmony in the Home booklet, mentioned on the front cover, would have been included before its removal for use by adults. On the front cover the name "M.C. Wagner" has been stamped.
The Indian obsession with skin tone always baffles me. The country is home to a variety of skin bleaching products (even for intimate areas) and Bollywood stars are inevitably fair.
Even when advertisers are trying to do something good, they use fairer complexion as a symbol of success. These ads for an eye hospital that does free work for the "poor" shows the recipients with patched clothes, dark skin and wavy hair, while the benefactors are pale, well-dressed and straight-haired.
What the holy hell?!? You would be justified in asking.
According to Stanford School of Medicine, these 1951 ads are — ironically — making fun of other brands' empty marketing promises of being "better for you" rather than fighting against the real medical science that would force ads to start to be more honest about the deadliness of their products a decade later.
Towards the end of the era in which false medical claims were endemic (early 1950s) the Old Gold brand had a prolonged campaign - with more than 50 variations on this theme - in which they touted: "We Don't Try to Scare You with Medical Claims." Ironically, many of these ads in their fine print make outlandish statements that Old Golds were less irritating and thus safer than the competition. Somehow they calculated that the public would not see this obvious hypocrisy. Note the white box strangely reminiscent of the Surgeon General's warning introduced years later. In what can only be characterized as rank hypocrisy, they claim Old Gold's are less irritating and easier on the throat.
While this poster tries a little too hard, the concept is a good one: what if right wing politicians treated every safety device the way they treat birth control?
I think where this gag petition goes wrong is when it changes mid-stream from making fun on abstinence-only education and attempted healthcare exclusions (and even bans) on birth control to wade into the murk of Rep. Todd Akin's biologically-questionable "legitimate rape" comment:
“It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”
Not that Rep. Akin doesn't deserve the full might of the snarky internet against him. It's just that every professional communicator knows that you have to focus your message. The Akin thing is about abortion, not contraception, and the life jacket metaphor isn't nearly as strong.
The Museum of Healthcare is definitely going to be on the agenda of my next trip to Kingston, Ontario (my hometown). What could be more weirdly interesting than bad medical ideas of the not-so-distant past?
Nipple shields are worn over a mother’s nipple during breastfeeding. They have been manufactured since at least the 16th century and are used to help babies to latch on at the breast or to protect a mother’s sore or damaged nipples. These shields are made of lead, but they have also been made from silver, wax, wood, pewter, tin, bone, ivory, and glass. Today, nipples shields come in rubber, latex, or silicone.
This pair of nipple shields come from Gananoque, Ontario where they were used in the general practices of Dr. C.H. Bird and his son Dr. H. Godfrey Bird in the first half of the 20th century.
Lead? The very element that sends parents today into paroxysms of fear and outrage when it shows up in toys or household products was purposely inserted into a nursing infant's mouth.
Gwen Sharp at Sociological Images posted this weird PSA from the Belgian Cancer Foundation, translating the message as "ladies, if you don’t do what we say, you’ll be hideous and your guy won’t want you any more."
I am told that Belgian humour is pretty special, so perhaps this ad is taken differently there. Perhaps it's dating me, but from a purely instinctive position I don't find the moms to be unattractive.
The idea of sun damage prematurely aging skin is a solid one. But the risk is more than aging; it's damage. And cancer. And even death.
AdFreak shared this horror-show depiction of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a matronly dress. He's a "nanny", you see. Get it? "Nanny state". All unAmerican and unmanly-like.
Mayor Bloomberg recently announced a plan to ban the sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces. That's an American pint, about 475 ml.
This plan is an attempt to fight the obesity epidemic, of which New Yorkers are some of the least contributors. Yet, the super-sized trend really is out of control. When I was my son's age, the small glass bottles of pop I got to buy with my allowance were 10 ounces. McDonald's soft drinks were even smaller (especially considering they were mostly ice). Now, the average Canadian consumes almost 120 litres of soft drinks per year, and our American cousins a whopping 216!
Something has clearly gone out of control. For one thing, pop is relatively cheaper, I guess because most of it is sweetened with heavy-subsidized corn. And consumer demand and portion sizes have been increasing in lockstep since the '80s. But is regulation the answer?
It's part of it. Not that it can stop people from over-indulging in sugary drinks. More because controversial legislation like this forces people to think about the issue.
And that's why this anti-ban ad is interesting. It's not really about people's freedom to drink themselves diabetic on Big Gulps. Can you guess who these brave defenders of consumer freedom really are?
That's right, brought to you by the people against smoking bans. You know, the bans that actually work.
You may be opposed to the exxxtra large pop ban for your own beliefs about personal liberty, about the role of the state in a free market, or even about the efficacy or enforceability of such a law. Those are fair points. But when big tobacco is putting money behind a campaign, you can bet it's because business interests — as opposed to public interest — are what's at stake. Because the more politicians regulate harmful consumer overindulgences, the less of a future they have. According to Wikipedia, other "Consumer Freedom" supporters include Brinker International (Chili's), RTM Restaurant Group (the owner of Arby's), Tyson Foods, HMSHost Corp (owners of airport and service station restaurants), and Wendy's.
Did I mention that, unlike hamburgers and other entrees that have super-thin profit margins, super-sized beverages make fast food restaurants tons of extra profit? (Knowing this, when I used to eat fast food regularly, I made a habit of just getting the burger. It not only kept me a little healthier, but also felt good to screw with the business model.)
We all do things we know are bad for us. But in my opinion, Mayor Bloomberg's ban is not as much social engineering as social marketing. It gets all of us (not just New Yorkers) talking about why portion sizes are so out of control. It makes us aware that we're being used. And with awareness comes change. Slowly, perhaps. But it can happen.
And that, I believe, is how Mayor Bloomberg rolls. He started a WHO-sponsored breastfeeding initiative, to try to get formula samples out of hospitals. He is on record saying “governments at all levels must make healthy solutions the default social option." And he went after secondhand smoke.
He is a nanny. But he's a democratically-elected one. And the changes he is starting will probably stick, once people get used to them.
Speaking of change, I'd really love it if advertisers and public figures — especially ones representing major consumer brands — would stop using femininity as an insult to men.
I have a message for Consumer Freedom from Iggy Pop:
Du Darfst is a German company that produces butter, cheese, sausages and other rather gluttonous foods. For their latest campaign, they have decided to create a movement, "Fuck the Diet", encouraging people to make nutritional contrariness part of their social identity.
In addition to the above video and links to a Facebook page the campaign site features advice from a nutritionist named Silke Kayadelen who says "I want to stay as I am!" It champions the approach of simple choices in food and exercise to enjoy life without getting fat. And it features recipes.
Yeah... I'm assuming this is aimed at women.
It may not be the most nutritionally sensible approach, but I sure do love the tagline.
Last year, they told Wisconsonites not to eat cheese during football games. Now they're telling people in Chicago not to eat hot dogs just in time for baseball season.
"Consuming processed meats increases the risk of colorectal cancer, according to a large number of studies, including the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study. Studies also show a strong link between other types of cancer and processed meats. An NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, for example, found that processed red meat was associated with a 10 percent increased risk of prostate cancer with every 10 grams of increased intake."
So if I eat 100g of hot dogs, I'm have a 100% chance of getting prostate cancer? I'm already a goner many times over!
As usual, PCRM is just making waves while preaching to their shrill choir. Yes, processed meats are bad for you (especially those nasty factory dogs). But this provocation will do nothing to educate people about making better eating choices. It will, if anything, have the opposite effect as angry Chicagoans are motivated to have a dog just to spite the billboard.
"Hot dogs are a great Chicago tradition and part of a healthy, balanced diet. They come in a variety of nutrition and taste formulas and they are an excellent source of protein, vitamins and minerals," said National Hot Dog & Sausage Council President Janet M. Riley. "This group's claims are an effort to seek attention for their animal rights cause.”
...
"Consumers need a healthy balanced diet and they need balanced, credible information," [says] Riley. "When it comes to nutrition and cancer, check with health sources such as your doctor, dietician or the U.S. Dietary Guidelines. You can be assured that they will tell you that a healthy diet can include processed meats like hot dogs alongside your vegetables, grains and dairy."
Damn it, Janet. This isn't health food we're talking about here. People know that hot dogs are salty, smoked, conglomerations of scary dead pig leftovers. We know they are junk food. And we love them anyway.
I just got around to picking up a copy of Food Inc. this week and watching the film. It's pretty good infotainment. (My 7-year-old loves it, and has been watching it over and over again!)
One of the corporate targets of the documentary makers is BPI, "Beef Products Inc.", the company responsible for extracting the meat paste from trim that has become infamous as "Pink Slime".
Meanwhile, BPI is fighting back with a campaign Wordpress site called "Pink Slime is a Myth" in which they tell their side of the story.
Actual copy: "Ammonia is essential for life. This naturally occurring substance is found in virtually all life forms, from plants to animals to humans. Life could not have evolved and cannot survive without it."
They make the usual mistake of protesting too loudly that boneless lean beef trim (their term for the product) "is beef – period".
What it is, is meat that has been separated from the trimmed fat of cow carcasses through chemical and mechanical means and has been sterilized with Ammonium Hydroxide .
What it is not, is this:
That's mechanically separated chicken. Want a nugget?
I'm not defending BPI. I think what they do is gross, and I don't want to eat it. But if we're going to stop putting processed animal byproducts in our meat snacks, we're going to have to give up cheap meat and accept a more wasteful meat industry.
What?
Let's look at it this way: livestock are more than steaks and chops. Traditional trim, carved off the bones with an expert knife, wound up as sausages, cold cuts and ground meat. It still does, if you buy your processed meats from a butcher who makes them in-store. (Which I am, admittedly, a real snob about. Even organic packaged hot dogs gross me out.)
But even the most expert cutter misses lots of digestible protein that is in unpalatable organs, bone marrow, and inextricably merged with fat. The old-school solution would be to render it into gelatin, tallow or lard, or make it into stock. But back in the '60s and '70s, food scientists started looking for ways to get more edible and saleable product from each animal. Mechanically separated meat entered the market, and it got into many of the packaged soups, burgers, sausages and finger foods you eat.
This was seen as a good thing. Consumerist quotes Roger Mandigo, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln:
"Most people would be extremely unhappy if they were served heart or tongue on a plate," he observed. "But flaked into a restructured product it loses its identity. Such products as tripe, heart, and scalded stomachs are high in protein, completely edible, wholesome, and nutritious, and most are already used in sausage without objection." Pork patties could be shaped into any form and marketed in restaurants or for airlines, solving a secondary problem of irregular portion size of cuts such as pork chops. In 1981 McDonald's introduced a boneless pork sandwich of chunked and formed meat called the McRib, developed in part through check-off funds [micro-donations from pork producers] from the NPPC [National Pork Producers Council]. It was not as popular as the McNugget, introduced in 1983, would be, even though both products were composed of unmarketable parts of the animal (skin and dark meat in the McNugget). The McNugget, however, benefited from positive consumer associations with chicken, even though it had none of the "healthy" attributes people associated with poultry.”
McRib, McNugget: McAnicallySeparatedMeat. (Although the McNugget changed to "real" chicken a few years ago.) So why is this beef process singled out for disgust?
But is it really worse than the others? The process at issue is the decontamination with ammonia, which is toxic. It was actually a breakthrough for BPI, since the trimmings that are their raw product get disgustingly contaminated in industrial butchery, and were previously not fit for human consumption. The ammonia was supposed to fix that.
But when you look for research on the safety of the process, it's not trace ammonia that's the big problem. It's that it still lets some pathogens, like e. coli and salmonella, through. BPI had been exempted from regular testing and recalls, simply because the US government was overconfident with the efficacy of chemical sterilization.
Factory mass-production of meat is gross, period. But it also allows companies to offer $1 hamburger deals and other cheap meats, plus it feeds more people per animal—which has some significant environmental benefits. The original process of mechanical separation of beef from bones was banned in the US following the mad cow epidemic, so this is one of the cheapest sources of total animal utilization available.
(Ironically, the "nose-to-tail" foodie movement attempts to accomplish the same goal, but by gourmet means, by creating recipes for offal and other unpopular animal parts.)
If we want to stop eating questionable meat, we will have to eat less meat overall and pay a lot more for it. But as long as enough people are ignorant or ambivalent about what goes in their meals, there will always be a market for Pink Slime.
My advice for BPI, and consumer advocates, is to be absolutely honest. Activists need to stop misusing the chicken image and focus fairly on all mass-produced factory meat processes (as well as related food safety, worker rights and animal welfare issues), not just the cause of the day. BPI needs to back off on its claims that their product is virtually identical to ordinary lean ground beef, and take the position that using more of the animal is more economical and sustainable as long as you don't think about it too much.
Epilogue: BPI was so outraged by its portrayal in Food Inc. and on Chef Oliver's show that it commissioned its own reactionary video series:
Branding junk food as bad for you is a common trend these days, but a customer tucking in to a "Double Bypass Burger" coincidentally suffered a heart attack right in the Las Vegas restaurant.
The establishment is a hospital theme restaurant: waitresses ("nurses") take orders ("prescriptions") from the customers ("patients"). A tag is wrapped on the patient's wrist showing which foods they order and a "doctor" examines the "patients" with a stethoscope. The menu includes "Single", "Double", "Triple", and "Quadruple Bypass" hamburgers,[1] ranging from 8 to 32 ounces (230 to 910 g) of beef (up to about 8,000 calories), all-you-can-eat "Flatliner Fries" (cooked in pure lard), beer and tequila, and soft drinks such as "Jolt" and Mexican-bottled Coca-Cola made with real sugar.[2] Customers over 350 lb (160 kg) in weight eat for free if they weigh in with a doctor or nurse before each burger.
Eater recognizes the possibility that this was a ("incredibly sad and evil") publicity stunt, and adds that the man is reported to have survived.
Owner "Doctor" Jon Basso told FOX5 he felt ‘horrible’ for the man.
“Tourists were taking photos of him as if it were some type of stunt,” Basso said. “Even with our own morbid sense of humor, we would never pull a stunt like that.”
(He added that there have been a “variety of incidents” at the restaurant, but this was the first full-scale coronary.)
Let's hope the staff get medical training along with their uniforms:
