yandy.com launches its annual Halloween viral outrage earned media campaign

This year's earned media campaign leads with Huffington Post's coverage of the "Sexy Deadmau5" costume. I'm contributing to their marketing as well, just like I did in 2011, 2012, and 2013.

Let's be honest with ourselves: Outrage is the currency of social media. Marketers offer up new outrages with every passing season, and we predictably rage about it to anyone who will hear.

Sure, the advertiser will take some heat, but the people who will get angry with yandy.com and their ilk are not the ones buying "Sexy Mario" or "Sexy Racist Native American Stereotype" costumes. And the negative publicity will just add to the edginess of choosing to go to a party dressed as a sexualized teenage private school girl.

It's a win-win clickbait strategy for sleazy marketers and internet social justice warriors alike. And girls lose. Like always.

I'm sorry. Feel free to lament my hypocrisy below:

The 5 worst kinds of "sexy" Halloween costumes at Yandy.com

Not even close to making the list.

Yandy.com is known for its ridiculous contributions to the "sexy ____" Halloween costume epidemic, helping young women provide their male friends with a plethora of unspeakable fantasies, from sexually available french fries to women dressed as Bugs Bunny (who, admittedly, was attractive when he put on a dress and played a girl bunny).

But in addition to the self-objectification that comes from mixing porn with your candy corn on the 31st, Yandy provides several opportunities to set feminism and civil rights back decades. 

Here are some doozies:

Runners Up: "Sexy Working Women Who Get Sexually Harassed on The Job"

How is this even a nurse's uniform?

Nurses. Flight Attendants. Domestic workers. Whatever it takes to minimize women's serious contributions to the workforce.

5. A Pink Frisky Leopard "For The Cure"

AKA "Breast Cancer Awareness Pink Leopard Costume"

Hell Hath No Furry Like a Pinkwashed Sexy Leopard. But hey, 10% of the proceeds from the sale of this thing "will go to benefit breast cancer research and awareness".

4. Asian Fetish Get-ups

"The Geisha With The Dragon Tattoo"

What do you get when you combine sexism, racist stereotypes, and a lighthearted look at prostitution in one costume? Yeah. Just don't.

3. The "Sexy Schoolgirl"

"Seductive School Girl"

I don't know why girls' private schools still insist their students wear kilts. The fetishization of "school girls" reeks of Nabikovian ephebophilia. And feeding the fetish at Halloween isn't helping stop the sexualization of teenagers.

2. "Indian" anything

"Reservation Royalty"

My brother-in-law, Dave, who is part of the Canadian First Nations community, told this story today:

I was in a Halloween shop with my kids when the clerk came over and asked: "Can I help you find anything?" I then asked him:"Yes, do you have any 'Black suits'?" I told him that I wanted to go out as a 'black guy' for Halloween. He said "No". Then I asked him: "Well how about Jew suits... do you have any Jew suits?" Again he said "No!" I asked him if it seemed offensive and he said while scratching his head: "Well...yeah, it would be." Then I pointed at the Native American outfit they were selling and said: "So is that..."

1. And the winner is...

This stupid costume, racistly called "Robyn da Hood", was not a particular standout until last week, when it appeared in a rather notorious Instagram and Facebook photo:

Via thinkspeakstress on Tumblr

That's right — if you really want to stink up Halloween, you can now dress up as Caitlin "Kt" Cimeno, the woman who showed the world how racist young white Americans can still be. She's pictured with her brother, Greg Cimeno (as George Zimmerman) and friend William Filene (in blackface, as Trayvon Martin).

How meta would that be? It's a little late to order now, but there's always next year.

PETA's frightful new Halloween ad stars someone from Twilight

Christian Serratos, who played Angela Weber in the Twilight movies, is already a PETA veteran at age 23. She previously appeared nude in one of their anti-fur ads, and appeared alongside a mixed bag of b-and c- list celebrities in an anti-sealing campaign.

Now Ms. Serratos gives us this Halloween pro-vegetarian campaign, appearing as a... zombie circus performer? ...vampire figure skater? ...reanimated magician's assistant? Not too sure.

Agreed on the factory farming issue, though.

This Halloween campaign could scare you to death

Via

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.

Via 

Boo! **cough cough cough**

Dress your tween daughter as a "sassy squaw" this Halloween

My sister-in-law, Laura L., shared this picture from a Facebook. I'm used to Halloween being a celebration of awkward and/or offensive stereotypes, but "squaw"? Seriously?

The term was once common for indigenous North American women, entering English as a loan word from the Algonquian languages, but is now usually considered a derogatory (by some, even obscene) term.

This costume is marketed by inCharacter. Here it is in their catalogue:

The company also makes "adult" versions, but omits the "s" word:

The "Sassy Squaw" costume is also for sale at Amazon.com, Sears.com, ebay's Shopping.com and Buy.com (where it was renamed "Sassy Indian Maiden Costume") along with a number of other stereotyped native costumes for girls.

To my First Nations nieces, and all Aboriginal women: I am sorry this shit is still happening.

This Sexy Big Bird costume is brought to you by the letters C, E, A, S, E, A, N, D, D, E, S, I, S and T

With Big Bird the new symbol for the hate-on that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has for PBS's public funding, Big Bird Halloween costumes are selling out across the United States. But Sesame Street Workshop would like the world to know that the push-up Big Bird minidress (above) is not an officially licensed product.

Sarah Beth Erb from Sesame Street Workshop told Buzzfeed's Katie Notopoulos, “our legal team has sent a cease and desist letter to the website selling them, will monitor the site, and follow up accordingly to make sure the items in question are removed.”

This, according to the Buzzfeed post, is the official costume:

I have to admit, Flapper Big Bird seems as strange to me as Slutty Big Bird. And the latter isn't nearly as hypersexed as many other costumes being pitched to young women these days.

Interestingly, Yandy sells both costumes on its site, the official one as "Sexy Big Bird Costume" ("Learning the ABC's has never been this sexy") and the other as "Exclusive Yellow Dress and Stockings" ("Bird head piece not included"). Sure, they suggest wearing a "Big Bird Headband" with it (as modelled by a young girl). But I'm not sure SSW has much of a case.

Little Bra of Horrors

Missed this one before Halloween. Created by Target Marketing for The Boobie Trap in St. John's,  the ads have fun with the horrors of an ill-fitting bra:





There are also outdoor posters (via AoTW) advertising the frightful hooters:

 Including one that must have been too scary even for YouTube:

My women readers, what do you think of this campaign? It targets you. Does the humour speak to you?

As a man, I can't get past the visuals. ("My headline is up here!")

Model Heidi Klum needs a sandwich... a BRAINS! sandwich

Crushable reports that for her 13th annual Halloween party, supermodel Heidi Klum decided to do what many beautiful women do for costume parties, which is strip down...

Really, really down.

According to the article:

"Heidi Klum goes all out when it comes to her costumes. Nothing is too outlandish, too dorky, too labor-intensive. Then I promptly forget her dedication to the holiday and am surprised every year by what she comes up with.

This year is no exception: Heidi showed up to her own Halloween party looking like a corpse stripped of all its skin. And this wasn’t some sexy ghoul: The only airbrushing involved was the fake blood and muscles showing through all over her body. It makes you wince just looking at it. She even wore a pair of false teeth! Truly, she’s unrecognizable."

Here it is full-length, from Style Bistro:

Also, check out the heels:

Stylefrizz

Stylefrizz

Happy Halloween, Heidi. Yikes.

An Open Letter to Hawkins Cheezies

Dear Mr. Hawkins

Today is Halloween, and I am giving out nothing but Cheezies.

This is not due to any obsession with your product. It is the best of its category, sure, but there are other reasons to give it out.

First of all, I am from Kingston. You are from Belleville. I now live in Ottawa. And your product gives me the opportunity to contribute to a regional family-owned business. My family and I buy local food as much as possible — Ontario wines, and local cheese, meat and produce. So the opportunity to make even our rare junk food purchases (sorry) locavorous is one we appreciate.

Second, I'm having more and more of a problem with chocolate these days. A child labour problem. So much of the cheap chocolate that will be given out tonight to excited children was illegally harvested by children their own age in Ghana and Ivory Coast. These kids are exposed to dangerous working conditions, climbing trees with machetes to harvest pods, and few of them go to school. Many are trafficked from neighbouring countries as slave labour. It's really sad.

That's why my wife and I have tried to move towards Fairtrade chocolate from another regional company, Camino. But that stuff is a little expensive for Halloween giveaways.

Your product, on the other hand, is very affordable. I just wish it had not been so hard to find. But I know how the companies of "Big Chips" dominate shelf space with money and pressure. My sharp-eyed son managed to find two 24-packs of 28g bags of Cheezies stuffed into a bottom shelf at the Halloween display in an Ottawa Wal-Mart. (We had to buy the rest in much more expensive 8-count bags from Metro.)

Part of my Hawkins horde.

I was surprised how few Hawkins Cheezies I could find in local retail. Everyone seems to agree that yours are the best. Humpty Dumpty's cheese things and Cheetos both have long and scary ingredients lists, compared to yours — including MSG. People like your crunch better, too, and the fact that the orange stuff is not quite so stainingly neon.

I would have expected that Halloween was the perfect time to mount a strong regional campaign, touting your provenance and your goodness, to encourage parents around Ontario to act as brand ambassadors to hand out Cheezies samples at their doors. But I saw nothing.

You have a good product, but I'm afraid that your marketing is a little old fashioned. Why can't I find this beloved Canadian brand on Facebook? Where would I hear your great story, if I had not bothered to Google you? You need help.

And it's not just the "promotional" P of marketing that you need to work on. While the product tastes great, I note that you are a hold-out for still using hydrogenated vegetable oil. My son doesn't eat enough Cheezies to make the small amount of trans fats a health issue, but your competitors have already made the switch to better oils. You need to do that, ASAP. The war on trans fats is not going away.

The other thing you could do is make sure your product fully lives up to its local, wholesome, made-in-Canada heritage. If you're using Canadian corn, you should proudly say so. People like that. And while I don't expect you to go organic, as a family-owned company you could become a very popular champion of smaller, family-owned farms that use non-GMO corn. This would also be a great thing to add to your story. Finally, using real aged cheddar is part of your Canadian charm. Is the cheese made regionally, or provincially? This could also be a great story to tell.

And then there's the peanut thing. Humpty Dumpty got their cheese sticks certified peanut free. I'm sure you could, too.

Your product will never be health food. But it is a "feel-good" food. Wouldn't it be great if you were able to out-maneuver your larger competition in Canada by being the cheese-flavoured snack with more to feel good about?

This is a conversation I'd like to have. So if you're in the neighbourhood tonight, please drop by for some Cheezies.

F'd Ad Fridays: Birthing and nursing o'lanterns

I actually like these, although others may find them weird. The first one would be a great way to freak out your neighbours, depending on the uptightness of your community. The second is just damn cute.

They were created by Blessed Birth Doula Services and shared by my super-lactivist FB friend Emma.

Happy Halloween weekend, everyone.

Postscript: Apparently birthing pumpkins are a thing this year. But most seem like they were done by guys.

F'd Ad Fridays: Sexy teenage holocaust victim Halloween costume

I don't think you can sink much lower than this "Anne Skank"costume:

Lisa Wade writes in Sociological Images, "The Halloween revelers who made the choice to sexualize and laugh at this 15-year-old victim of the holocaust are graduate students in the Creative Writing program at Florida State University."

F'd Ad Fridays: Axe says "Boo(bs)" with Halloween zombie vid

She's coming from inside the house!

So, Axe gives us some Halloween horror laced with T&A and a bit of zombie humour. They've done worse.



Via Adrants

Trick or Read: UNICEF now using QR codes for digital donations

Ah, yes! The UNICEF box. An important part of the Halloween routine. After you got your candy, you'd get a handful of pennies in that flimsy cardboard box. Then you'd bring it back to school for rolling and counting.

Via Polite Dissent

I haven't spotted as many UNICEF boxes at my door in recent years, and I was wondering what had become of the "children helping children" charity. After all, it's not like a handful of pennies buys much these days, even in the developing world.

Turns out that UNICEF Canada discontinued the program five years ago because "Coin is very labour-intensive."

Is that the end of the tradition everywhere? The Cause Marketing blog today answered my curiosity: UNICEF USA has gone high tech.

"...the United States Fund for UNICEF has embraced a slick new way for kids to Trick or Treat for UNICEF. 

Today kids can Trick or Treat for UNICEF, raise good sum of money and never touch a single nickel of it. 

This Halloween the kids can print out a canister wrapper like the one at the left which features a QR code. When people scan the code using their smartphone they can make a direct donation to UNICEF 

What if the person who answers the door doesn’t have a smartphone or the necessary QR reader? 

Well a persistent Trick or Treater also knows that people can text “TOT” to UNICEF (864233) to make a $10.00 donation to Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF. The $10 will be added to donor’s phone bill."

I'm a little skeptical about this approach. While QR codes have become a ubiquitous part of the print communication landscape, shortening the gap between it and the digital world, some feel they have already jumped the shark. Will the average suburban mom or dad really whip out a smart phone at the door?

The texting plan, however, is much more likely to work based on my experience with the medium.

And what about the whole healthy competitive aspect? We used to compare the weight of our UNICEF boxes when we brought them into school. It was part of the fun.

If someone is going to donate $10 per text, they are maybe going to do it once for the entire night. The donations would then no longer be a matter of how many kids came to the door with boxes. One exposure to the QR or TOT code might trigger an end to the night's donations. How will the other kids feel when they are told they're carrying the boxes for nothing? And how many dishonest but polite people will say they already gave?

I think it's great that UNICEF is embracing change. But I think they've lost their connection with the kids. The money was only part of it for us. What was really important was the reminder, during a night of gluttony and greed, of how lucky we really were. I hope that is not lost on today's Halloweenies.

JesusWeen is coming...

This is no joke. There really is a Christian religious group calling for believers to put the Christ back in Halloween.

From jesusween.com:

Every year, the world and its system have a day set aside (October 31st) to celebrate ungodly images and evil characters while Christians all over the world participate, hide or just stay quiet on Halloween day. Being a day that is widely acceptable to solicit and knock on doors, God inspired us to encourage Christians to use this day as an opportunity to spread the gospel. The days of hiding are over and we choose to take a stand for Jesus. “Evil prevails when good people do nothing”. JesusWeen is expected to become the most effective Christian outreach day ever and that is why we also call it” World Evangelism Day”.

Started in 2002, it's basically a more organized hybrid of the "harvest party" alternative celebration — promoted by some fundamentalist groups to keep their kids away from trick-or-treating — and controversial religious cartoonist Jack Chick's appeal to witness to children by giving his religious tracks at the door instead of candy.

(via chick.com)

In the case of JesusWeen, participants are encouraged to dress all in white and distribute bibles and tracts. And the movement has spread into Canada.

Metro reports that a 40-year-old Calgary pastor named Paul Ade, who says "I don’t believe Halloween represents anything close to God or close to Christianity". They are currently recruiting through direct outreach to likeminded congregations, as well as through Twitter and Facebook.

Again from the JesusWeen site:

"While we hope to impact more nations from next year, our focus for this year is to make major impact in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton in Canada; focus on Maryland, Houston and Dallas in the USA; and London in the UK. In reality JesusWeen will be held by small groups, individuals or by churches in thousands of public locations and from home, therefore it’s not restricted to any particular city. The goal is to have JesusWeen groups (Jesus Winners) in every city and every nation spreading the love of Christ on October 31st."

They point out that "The dictionary meaning of Ween is to expect, believe or think."

Unfortunately, that is not what "ween" means in the parlance of our times. (Warning: Urban Dictionary is mostly written by teenage boys, and therefore highly offensive to everyone else.)

Holy unfortunate branding.

F'd Ad Fridays: Horrifying Halloween candy

Their barftastic  sweetness isn't just for Easter anymore.

The Drum quotes a Cadbury Brand Manager:

“After a very successful trial in 2010, Cadbury Screme Egg is back, bringing with it some gruesome gooiness to the Halloween season. Consumers will enjoy its unexpectedly green yolk, giving them the opportunity to enjoy the classic taste of a Creme Egg out of the usual Easter season.”

You think this is Halloween candy, Cadbury? No, THIS is Halloween candy:

From Fast Co. (a couple of years back):

"in the confections of Stephen J. Shanabrook, sweet treats turn into gruesome mementos of contemporary life. The candies you see above were cast from the fatal wounds of anonymous cadavers. According to Eat Me Daily, Shanabrook says the truffles skate 'very close to the edge, the forbidden place for artists.'"

If you really want a "screme", imagine dropping one of those in a kid's Halloween bag.

F'd Ad Fridays: Now you can be a sexy eating disorder for Halloween

This costume is, at least, scary:

From Feministing:

The picture on the website shows a young, thin, Caucasian woman with large breasts sporting a short, skintight black dress with the outline of a skeleton on it. She is wearing a red, circular button that reads “Anna Rexia”. The ribbon tie belt around her waist has the markings of a tape measure.

The author, Camille, adds:

I don’t see this site, or any others, marketing costumes like “Sexy Leukemia Patient” or “Slutty Angiodysplasia Victim”. And why would I? Those are “real” conditions.

Well, she seems to have gotten through. The e-commerce link to the product is 404ed.

The world's scariest ad

It's Halloween at Acart. But since I posted all our costume pics at the official blog, I'm left looking for another topic to round out the week here.

This came out a few years ago, but it's still gaining fans. Especially since the trend of reaction videos has arisen. Seems like the right time to post it.

Don't worry, it's just an ad. But long ago, people noticed something funny near the end of the car beauty shot. And like the Time Travelling Hipster or the Chaplin Cell Phone Lady, it took off.

See if you can spot it:



And, if you're still new to the meme, check out this playlist of general takeoffs:



Happy Halloween!

Sears courts the undead demographic...

...and I don't mean "Jessica™" and "Arnold Palmer®" brand shoppers.

For Halloween, Sears has actually decided to do something interesting. So if you're among the living dead, or just have a little craving for a cerebral snack, check out Sears' new Zombie Department. You'll be glad you did.