British wine campaign makes a vintage joke in bad taste

Premier Estates Wine, a British importer, has decided to recycle a very old sight gag to get publicity for its products. With the tagline "#tastethebush, they've taken to Twitter and YouTube:

They call it "the brand’s playful, tongue-in-cheek tone that’s born from classic British humour."  I call it a bad pun.

But hey, here's your attention:

No energy for outrage But the #tastethebush thing just makes me sad for all the oz winemakers working to improve the image of their wine

— Melanie Jappy (@japster2008) August 13, 2015

Nothing says 'Our wine is good' like comparing it to cunnilingus. #tastethebush https://t.co/GQfatvislI

— David Lewis (@davidclewis) August 13, 2015

Both amazing and horrendous #tastethebush autocorrected to #taste thrush on my phone https://t.co/59Ati9EPYb

— Jo Murray (@Crunchbunchfit) August 13, 2015

Tweet I want to #tastethebush and you could win a restraining order. https://t.co/qdyqXT6RyR

— Stephen Bush (@stephenkb) August 13, 2015

Another #marketing campaign thought up in a bar. A bar based on a uni campus. In 1960 #tastethebush <slowclap> pic.twitter.com/94rpADyae3

— Louise Dixon (@LouiseDixonMCR) August 13, 2015

Taste my menstrual blood @premestateswine #TasteTheBush pic.twitter.com/DaXrmd5w8Q

— Sarah Moore (@knityoghurt) August 13, 2015

I tend to agree with the complaint about Australian wines. Monty Python once compared the bouquet of one to an armpit (with regrettable racism). It makes you wonder why a UK wine seller wants to compare the taste of their Shiraz to the great down under.

Jarlsberg: Fear of a Black Baby

It's an old joke: The white woman with a white husband has a Black baby. It's the punchline of a joke that goes way back in time, and it's awful.



In this case, it's used as a sight gag in a Norwegian ad for Jarlsberg cheese, by TRY/APT, Oslo. As Joe La Pompe points out, the overall ad concept is unoriginal, as it is suspiciously similar to a French paper ad that won a Bronze Lion at Cannes just last year.

The French ad used the comparison of "this is inferior to that" in a comical and fairly harmless way. Now let's look at the same gag in the Norwegian spot:

Jarlsberg is to other cheeses as:

• Football (Soccer) is to Vacuous American Entertainment Shows
• Proper Funeral Attire is to Inappropriate Party Attire
• A Formal Caregiver is to a Male Stripper
• A Nursing Home is to a Mental Hospital

and...

• A White Husband is to an Affair with a Black Man

See the problem? Well, there is more than one, but the black baby gag is the most objectionable.

Enough with the racist jokes, already. This is the 21st Century. Playing on white fears of Black sexuality is old, and it's harmful.

"Dumb Ways to Die" has been sold to a life insurance company

It was the most fun, most ear-wormy safety campaign of 2012. It won multiple awards. It reached the top 10 in the global iTunes chart within 24 hours of its release, and was a popular gaming app.

And now it's selling life insurance in Canada.







Joe La Pompe first made me aware of this. According to the Globe and Mail, Metro Trains, the Australian client for whom the original ad was made, has embarked on a global licensing program to make money from the cartoon song's popularity. Empire Life stated, “The message ... aims to make the topics of death and life insurance more approachable and remind consumers that the unexpected happens every day.”

What a stupid idea... for both Empire Life and Metro.

First of all, the viral potential of the cartoon has already been tapped worldwide. Thanks to international ad blogs, the PSA is already very familiar to Canadians. Many have seen it already, and will not necessarily associate it with life insurance or with Empire Life.

Second, it reeks of greed on the part of Metro. They had a runaway hit for the public good, and they sell it to an insurance company who totally miss the point? Now all those cute death scenarios are there to scare people into buying something, rather than to make a point about rail safety.

Third, how lazy do you have to be, as a marketer, to buy a successful, globally-recognized safety campaign and just tack a tacky tagline and corporate logo on it? Yeesh.

The only original thing they did was to translate and re-record it in French.

Two campaigns, same concept, same country, competing products

Ads of The World's Ivan Raszl pointed out that both of these ads were submitted to him on the same day:

Post by Ads of the World.

What is going on here? The first is by Artplan in Brasília, Brazil. The second is by Propeg, in Bahia, Brazil. They're both for armoured vehicles. Coincidence? It can happen to anyone. But is this too statistically unlikely to be innocent?

I would love to be a (portuguese-speaking) fly on the wall at either of those agencies today...