Women, as seen in 1962 Playboy ads #FdAdFriday

Me adman, you secretary.

That's "Kent". With an "e".

Reminds me of "Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere".

"Quiet, sweetie. Men are drinking."

Those had better be some awesome smokes...

Get women to kiss your... cologne.

I have no words.

Get it? Get it?

Via Retronaut

F'd Ad Fridays: GM insults cyclists, gets its bumper handed to it

Copyranter posted this phenomenally dumb ad from GM, aimed at college students across the United States.

The culture wars between drivers and cyclists are not something the automotive giant wants to wade into. There are already fights in cities all around North America about new bike lanes on downtown streets.

Just this week, where I live, a cyclist was killed as a result of being doored by a careless parked driver, while the trial opened of a man accused of ploughing into five cyclists in his van in the suburbs two years ago.

And right now, social media networks are full of content like this:

I'm not going to say cars are evil. (My wife owns a car.) And I'm not going to beatify cyclists, because as a pedestrian I have been at the receiving end of near-misses by aggressive riders. But I will say that a goddamn car manufacturer — especially one accused of once trying to destroy public transit in the US — is really endangering its social licence by trying to convince young people that they should be embarrassed not to drive a car.

And now even GM agrees. In response to pressure from cycling advocates and lots of Twitter hate, they have pulled the ad.

Policing the bike lanes, Lithuanian style

My own city of Ottawa has just recently started getting hardcore on bike lanes, physically segregating them from car traffic and patrolling them. There has been predictable backlash from inconvenienced drivers and businesses.

In Vilnius, Lithuania, the bike lanes have a bigger problem: rich and obnoxious citizens who use them as parking spaces for their luxury cars. So the Mayor decided to stage this dramatic demonstration of how he intends to end the conflict permanently — with an armoured military vehicle:



Hard. Core.

UPDATE: Adland reports that this was actually a comedy segment of the Lithuanian Erik & Mackan comedy show. Running over the cars was apparently the Mayor's idea, though.

My fellow admen, this is why they hate us

Via Sociological Images

Yes, it's superficially kind of amusing on a frat boy level. And the woman is certainly appealing. But as Dr. Gwen Sharp at Sociological Images points out:

"I suppose someone could argue that the message that you shouldn’t 'care' whether your women/cars are 'used' rejects the sexual double standard, but the objectification and the implication that non-virgin women are 'used' undermine any apparent rejection of that double standard."

In layman's terms, "comparing a sexually active woman to a used car is pretty f'ing offensive".

The ad appeared in the London Free Press.

Not only is it offensive, it's a ripoff. Another example of the same concept that made the internet rounds three years ago is this BMW ad that claims to be for their Premium Selection Used Car program in Greece:

Doesn't she look a little... Nabokovesque?

Gwen thinks this creepy ad must be unpublished spec creative, but this blogger gives full credits and a publication date:

Advertising Agency: BBDO Athens, Greece
Creative Director: Theodossis Papanikolaou
Art Director: David Kaneen
Copywriter: Daphne Patrikiou
Published: June 2008
Source: adsoftheworld

Oddly, though, the Ads of The World link doesn't work. Hmmmm...

Who's recycling who?

Back in February, I told you about a campaign for the Canadian Urban Transit Association that had been months in the making. If you live in a major Canadian urban area, you've probably seen it in bus shelters around your town:



But, just last week, a coworker sent me a link to this initiative on Ford's site:



Now, I have no idea which concept was conceived, approved, or published first. The fact is, this sort of thing happens all the time. We creatives are not that much different from each other, and when a nice, simple idea presents itself it's hard to ignore it. We try to imagine if we've seen it before. We Google the headlines. But when you come right down to it, coincidences happen.

What makes this one sort of weird is that it is essentially for the same cause — Retire Your Ride — but while one wants you to trade your old car in for a new one, the other (ours) suggests you get a bus pass.

I also think ours is a more elegant solution. But I'm biased.