The strangest McDonald's ads you will see today

Two teenage girls mug a terrified Jason/Leatherface hybrid for his burgers.




But they're French girls, and those burgers have stinky cheese on them! Who could resist?

There's another ad in the series, but it's a pretty weak extension of the concept:

Campaign by TBWA Paris. Via Ads of The World

Amnesty ad compares arms trade to tsunami disasters

(Cross-posted at Osocio)


Oh, dear. Remember this fiasco?

Created by DDB Brazil for WWF Brazil, it ignited a firestorm of protest, which WWF's international office first disavowed, then admitted may have been the approved regionally. On this year's September 11th anniversary, Buzzfeed's Copyranter named it #1 in his list of "The Five Worst 9/11 Exploitation Ads".

You could say that it simply tells an inconvenient truth about inconsistent cultural attitudes towards tragedy and death. But that point would be made at the expense of causing further hurt to the families of the World Trade Centre attack, as well as to those deeply affected by it.

Now, strangely, the 2005 tsunami tragedy that is being exploited to make a point about war and the arms trade:

The ad is by TBWA, Paris, for Amnesty International.


This brings the saga of over-produced, tragedy-exploiting ads full circle: "an epic and tragic natural disaster killed more people than an infamous terrorist act, but the arms trade is even worse."

(Admittedly, it could also be a reference to the more recent Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.)

Once again, creatives go for maximum impact to make one message of human loss at the cost of trivializing another. This kind of trade-off is a devil's bargain, in my opinion. It's all bad. You don't need to get into a comparison of which is worse. From my perspective this looks like lazy strategy and the elaborate (yet derivative) execution is blatant award-bait.

And I say this as a member of Amnesty. You can do better than this. You often do.


Tip via Ads of the World

More weird skin whitening ads from Asia

While the Western world tries desperately to convince its pale citizens to keep out of the sun and tanning booths, the East continues to baffle us with its obsession with skin whitening products.

In this case, a hand cream promises to make your skin so blindingly pallid, it will cast a white shadow. (Hmmm... that reminds me of a TV show I used to watch.)

The exaggeration is too obvious to accuse TBWA Hong Kong of false advertising in the concept itself, but these products can run the gamut from useless to downright dangerous. It's a shame people can't learn to love diverse beauty ideas, rather than being preyed on by snake oil ads.

Via I Believe in Advertising

Singapore's condoms protect you from more

Now here's a refreshing approach to condom marketing — a value-added App that keeps you from being walked in on by your parents.



Adrants posted this great campaign by TBWA\Tequila for Okamoto Condoms, the Okamoto Freedom Project, which promotes the brand by trying to help young people get it on without embarrassment.

We need more campaigns like that over here — promoting safer sex in every sense.

Why are these Argentinian health insurance ads in English?

I saw these today on Ads of The World:

Nice ads, simple idea, well-executed. But as with many campaigns I see on AOTW that were created for non-Anglophone countries, I scratched my head and wondered how they would work in Spanish.

You see, it's become common practice for agencies around the world to create parallel English-language print campaigns so that unilingual Anglos, as well as ESL people from other language groups, can evaluate and share their ideas in blogs and award shows. Sometimes the headlines are poorly translated. Other times, the agency puts a lot of effort into adapting the concept.

With a copy-based campaign like this, depending so heavily on words-within-words, I assumed the latter — and was quite impressed. But then I tracked down the original-language versions at the Medicus site:

The body copy is in Spanish, but the headline is the same. I guess the client was convinced that every member of their target market read English well enough to get the concept, and wouldn't mind that it was in a foreign language.

A couple of other notes about "international" versions of campaigns:

• The client only showed three executions, while the portfolio piece shows five.  
• The client version has body copy and a call to action, whereas the portfolio piece drops it and goes landscape — billboard version, or just Creative Director's choice to keep it "clean"?

Have you seen other examples of English ads created for audiences within a non-English country? I'd love to see them.

F'd Ad Fridays: The battery ad that will haunt your nightmares

Click to enlarge. You'll shit bricks.

Part toy, part sex doll, all creepy.

By TBWA, Chile

Via IBiA

F'd Ad Fridays: Every fisherman's nightmare

As somebody who fishes (yes, I know "Fisher" is the inclusive term now), I really hate these ads. Why?

Because accidentally hooking a mammal or bird, especially somebody's pet, is an absolute nightmare scenario. When I was a kid, my dog pierced his nose on a trolling lure when sniffing an open tackle box on an unsteady boat. He had to go into canine surgery to take it out. Just this past summer, a neighbour's dog chased my son's bobber into the lake, and hooked his lip. (The neighbour and I got it out without bloodshed on either side.)

Cute idea in theory, TBWA Vietnam
. But you just turned off your target market with a concept that is way too close to reality.

Via I Believe in Advertising

F'd Ad Fridays: The most unappetizing cling wrap ads I've ever seen

I may never eat again. You can almost hear the squeals as this piglet has pork chops shoved up its back end.

"I don't want to get porked!"

I get the concept, in theory, but the execution is so deeply disturbing that PETA should buy it and run it as ads for vegetarianism.

Seriously. What the hell were they thinking?

Ads by Creative Juice\g1\TBWA, Bangkok, Thailand
Via Ads of The World

A life worth living

Today is World AIDS Day. And this is one of the best AIDS awareness PSAs I have ever seen (via)



Created by TBWA France, it's not sappy. It's not shocking. It's not sexual.

And I think I've got something in my eye....

But it sure does seem like a great way to get people thinking differently about the future.