When this video first made the rounds last week, I filed it under "someone's idea of clever spec work" and kind of forgot about it. Not even worth a comment. Or so I first thought.
After all, PornHub is already in-market internationally with the crowdsourced "SFW advertising contest" which is much more clever than this. But since the mostly-male creative class in global advertising wants to do work that is even more sexist than the stuff that's already out there, we keep getting things like this:
I'm not convinced that PornHub had anything to do with this "ad". The post on Ads Of The World gives credit to a Spanish digital agency called La Despensa, which has a number of known brands in its portfolio. But did anyone at PornHub sign a contract, make an approval, or place this on any media?
Not that they're paragons of virtue. I just can't see them thinking this was a worthwhile regional campaign.
Much more interesting, to me however, is the commentary showing up on the AOTW post:
This is not a place in which I am used to seeing a lot of sensitivity. Is #YesAllWomen even reaching the hardened hearts and burned-out souls of advertising enthusiasts?
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:
This nasty little clip, which is making the viral rounds of HuffPo, LiveLeak, etc., is not a "Russian Tampax Ad". According to its own YouTube "about" section, it's a promotional video for the bizarre mess known as "Movie 43".
Not to say that admen are above using the "shark week" gag for a Tampax ad:
There's nothing advertising creatives love better than to go meta, and make fun of ad cliches for unrelated products, organizations or causes.
That was, presumably, this thinking behind the McDonald's ad (above) which apparently ran on Boston transit properties.
According to AdFreak, Arnold, Boston, created the ad. They were sent this stament from McDonald's
"Arnold apologizes for its mistake to McDonald's and to anyone who was offended by the ad. McDonald's did not approve the ad, and its release was our unintended error. We've addressed the issue and have improved our approval process to ensure this does not happen in the future."
Here are the other two ads, mocking adult education and business ad clichés:
I'd really love to know what kind of "unintended error" resulted in these ads being published and posted, without client approval, in a public place. Not to mention the fact that they followed the art direction of crappy ads so closely that they make the McDonald's brand look sloppy and amateurish.
After the JWT India/Ford scandal I am beginning to seriously wonder what absurd amount of "going rogue" with a brand it actually takes for an agency to get fired.
It's been a weird year for me, but I keep coming back to this blog as a way to think out loud about my complicated relationship with the advertising industry (on which I depend to pay my half of the mortgage). Luckily for me, quite a few people have decided that these thoughts are worth reading. Thank you for that. Here were your five favourites.
This was a silly self-parody of FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World" list, but open to user nominations and votes featuring imaginary women of fiction, legend, pop culture and advertising. The contest site is no longer live, so I have no idea who won.
This was a joke ad, by someone named Alexander Bozhko for "Altai Fake Festival" — something akin to the Chip Shop Awards. But that didn't stop it from being taken as real, once it showed up on Ads of The World.
Thanks to my Ukrainian friend Eugene Smirnov helped me get to the bottom (heh heh) of this one. Also to Mark Duffy ("Copyranter") who posted my debunking on Buzzfeed, leading to big analytics.
This was a look at how Italian social issues artist Anna Utopia Giordano put classic Venus nudes under the harsh knife of photoshop to make a point about changing beauty standards in media. The post got a lot of viral lift after being linked on Sociological Images.
What can I say? Certain keywords always lead to high readership.
In this case, the post was a teaser for a campaign by Britain’s CoppaFeel! and Male Cancer Awareness Campaign (MCAC) about male breast cancer. I followed it up on Osocio.
My most-clicked post of 2012 was a bit of a surprise to me, as it had no naked ladies in it whatsoever. It's about how a public transit etiquette campaign by Queensland Rail became a popular parody meme. I guess I need more like that.
Well, that's all for me in 2012. This year, I have give this blog a little more focus on the issues that are of most professional interest to me, particularly ethics. (Which is why the name is changing.)
But what would you like to see more of? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.
These ads appeared on a blog by Daniel James Evans, who says he's an advertising creative working at Buzzman Paris. They are apparently not "real" (approved, paid and published) ads, but they're still kind of fun:
The jokes just write themselves with a condom brand. But I still have to ask myself, if the end of the world really were coming, why would you care about the possibility of unplanned pregnancy or catching a sexually-transmitted infection?
