Housewife, USA, commits brand suicide

Seen on Ads of The World today: Suicide and Isadora Duncan.

There's not much to say about these ads. They claim to be for Etsy scarf seller The Year Of May, but I doubt any money changed hands.

What ads like this really are is promotion for the ad agency. In this instance, the  responsible party is Housewife, USA, a Texas-based virtual agency run by Flor Leibaschoff.

These are typical of the "edgy shit" made by creatives, for creatives, with no real purpose other than to get the makers noticed.

Well congratulations. Making fun of suicide and the grotesque death of Isadora Duncan are certainly attention-getting. Not the good kind of attention, but at least we know what you're willing to sink to.

Sex sells... coffins?

Miss May, via kalendarzlindner.pl

Selling products with calendars featuring nude, or otherwise sexualized, women is a very old tactic. Dating back to the "pin-up girls" of the mid-20th century, nudie calendars typically sold products aimed at men, and were displayed in male spaces: garages, workshops, etc. (Even my mild-mannered grandfather had one up in the office of the lumber mill where he worked.)

This one, however, takes the (cheese)cake.

I'll let Lindner Coffins, of Poland, explain:

With the fifth edition of Lindner Calendar we come back to nature, which we express with perfect harmony between Lindner coffins and natural wood, blue sea, red flowers, green fields and beauty of the female body.

Fifth edition? I guess there's quite a demand for softcore coffin porn. Like Pirelli tires, Lindner seems to be better known for its calendars than the actual product. Their calendars even have their own web site, which is much better designed than their corporate one, and is available in three languages.

The first edition, from 2010, features women clothed in fetish outfits, but without nudity. 2011 saw the introduction of weird and violent scenarios. By 2012 the clothes were gone, replaced by body paint. It only got nakeder from there.

Now there's even a "making of" video:



Now it can be said there's no limit to what people will try to sell by commoditizing women's sexuality. Sports Illustrated, watch your back...

Thanks to BuzzFeed's Rachel Zarrell for the tip.

Bad Valentine's Marketing #2: 'til death do us part

Via "30 Valentine's Day Gift Fails" on Buzzfeed.

Your Grandma won't rest until you get a job #FdAdFriday

Sissy Spacek has seen better days...

That's the joke in this bizarre ad by Draftfcb Argentina. AdFreak covered it this week, and it made some people really upset. (A commenter on their Facebook page wrote, "I hate this ad and I hope all the people who made it die violently.")



 I thought it was kind of funny.

Bad Whitney Houston tributes #FdAdFriday

This card was apparently produced before her death, and was just pulled from the shelves at Target:

Via Buzzfeed

This pill portrait, however, was posthumous:

Via TMZ

The real St. Valentine

There he sits (his head, anyway) in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. All that we really know about him is that his feast day is today (February 14) and that he is dead. Stories about him being a priest martyred by Emperor Claudius for secretly marrying Christian couples is a bit of late Mediaeval and Renaissance embellishment, as is his association with love and romance (attributed to Chaucer).

So enjoy your cards, candies and sexy time while you may. You'll eventually be a dead person people make up stories about too.

F'd Ad Fridays: "At Last Singer Etta James Dies at 73"

Casey also sent me a link to this apparent (and very sad) headline fail:

If it's real, it has since been changed.

But this hasn't:

Rest in peace, Ms. James

The saddest Tumblr of all time

LIVE! (I see dead people) photoshops classic album covers to edit out the dead guys.

The result is depressing as hell.

That's it. I can't take any more.