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.

Air Canada unilaterally dissolves Confederation

Via CBC

In 1864, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, was the site of a conference to discuss the formation of Canada. While Maritime provinces Nova Scotia and New Brunswick ended up joining with Ontario and Quebec to form the new country in 1867, PEI held out until 1873. The other province of Atlantic Canada, Newfoundland, was the last to join in 1949, until Nunavut was established in the '90s.

Atlantic Canadians were predictably outraged by the copywriting gaffe.

Wait, since when did we separate? #cbcns pic.twitter.com/klv7MlOcMf
— CBC Nova Scotia (@CBCNS) March 25, 2015

Although, considering that some Newfoundlanders still think they were robbed of their independence by Joey Smallwood's referendum, the ad was probably better received on George Street.

Air Canada, for its part, decided to see the silver lining:

Ah, Canada!

Canada's coolest police force is at it again...

Courtesy of @YRP here is your complimentary frosh week expense list. #makewisedecisions and #partywithcaution pic.twitter.com/vPbfATOPtK
— York Regional Police (@YRP) September 3, 2014

Remember when York Region Police "won the internet" by replying to a guy's Twitter request for dope? 

This year, they're using that same type of humour to warn local university and college students about the consequences of drunken hijinks. And somehow, they manage to make it feel less like a lecture:

Vancouver Transit Police apologize for victim-blaming ad

Another day, another ad campaign accused of blaming sexual assault victims. But this one has a positive lesson in it.

According to CBC, Vancouver Transit Police have agreed to remove this ad from Skytrain, following public complaints.

Transit Police spokesperson Anne Drennan stated that the victim-blaming was entirely unintentional, but added, "we see where they are coming from."

I work on campaigns like this, too, so I can see how this happened. The Copywriter was trying to use a clever turn of phrase, but didn't consider the unintended triggering of the word "shame" in the context. Neither did the client.

To their credit, however, Vancouver Transit Police have responded in a way that should be a teachable moment to other authorities creating campaigns that address the issue of sexual assault, either directly or indirectly.

First, they apologized with an acknowledgement that the wording could cause unintended harm. Then, they committed to removing the ads and replacing them with "new posters with wording approved by an advisory council that includes representatives from women's support groups."

Understand, apologize, fix the problem and show how you'll avoid it in the future. Is that so hard?

Domino's pizza targets bad home cooks with "food fails"

Ads Of The World

I doubt there's one popular internet photo meme that doesn't get turned into an ad campaign. In this case, it's "Food Fails" — pictures of really pathetic dishes shared on Tumblr, Instagram or elsewhere (Two of my favourites are Dimly Lit Meals for One, and the stomach-churning Cooking For Bae.)

Ads Of The World

This campaign by Artplan, Brazil, is sort-of funny. But personally, I find the execution lacks finesse. Why not just show the resulting dish, the Domino's logo, and a phone number to order?

Ads Of The World

That said, I can't help but point out that poor cooking skills are a major contributor to poor diet.  And the decades-long push for cheap, tasty and convenient fast food continues to erode these basic life skills.

Via Attic Paper

Via Country Chic Mom

Do we really need fast food brands telling us that we shouldn't bother making our own food?

Canadian Cancer Society vs. Zentai

When we process so much cultural information at such breakneck speeds, weir coincidences pop up all the time.

Zentai enthusiasts, via BBC

It happened to me last week, when this February PSA by the Canadian Cancer Society showed up in my Facebook feed:



Then literally moments later, a BoingBoing post about a Japanese fad called Zentai caught my attention on Twitter:

Zentai (short for "zenshintaitsu," Japanese for "full body suit") is a largely obscure Japanese subculture whose adherents go out wearing full-body patterned spandex suits that cover their faces. In a relatively unsensational article in the Japan Times, Harumi Ozawa talks to a few zentais about their hobby, and learns that for some proponents, being completely covered is a liberating experience. The zentais in the article describe the suit as an anonymizer that frees them from the judging gaze of society, which is a fascinating study in contradictions, since the suits undoubtably attract lots of judgmental looks, but these seem to adhere to the suit without penetrating to the wearer within. 

Some zentais wear their suits in superhero fashion, and do good deeds in public, while others wear the suits for sexual kicks. They are often mocked in Japanese pop culture. One academic cited in the article believes that the wearers use the suits to hide their appearance in order to force others to deal with their "true" underlying identity.

I'm not going to pull the knee-jerk Western "bwahaha, Japanese culture is so weird" thing here. Rather, I'm interested to know if the Japanese fad directly influenced the low-budget Canadian PSA. After all, these memes shoot around the world in moments, and we're all soaking in a sort of cultural stone soup that attracts all kinds of random ingredients.

Is every brand a "challenger brand" now?

So, Taco Bell is offering breakfast in the United States now. Should McDonald's be worried? As the undisputed gods of the fast food breakfast, McD should, by all accounts, ignore all challengers — at least in public.

At least, those were the ironclad Rule of Marketing we were taught: The #1 brand in a category never acknowledges the competition. Coke, for example, pretends Pepsi doesn't exist, so that Pepsi has to spend all its efforts comparing itself to Coke.

Fast food was pretty much the same: McDonald's just IS, while Burger King, Wendy's and the others spend advertising dollars basically reminding you that they aren't on top.

Taco Bell's ad, above, is no exception. (And not a new approach, either.) So did McDonald's just chuckle softly to itself, and go swimming in a room full of Egg McMuffin revenue?

No, they did not:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. pic.twitter.com/e0dFN1ZCqy
— McDonald's (@McDonalds) March 29, 2014

Is this a foolhardy brand strategy deviation by a rogue social media team, or is McDonald's really going to start validating its competition now? Is it yet another marketing rule we need to rewrite?

"Vaginal" advertising doesn't get much sleazier than this

More than 20 years ago, before I got my first agency job, I recall having a decidedly non-sober discussion with my friends about sex in advertising: "If things keep getting more explicit," I joked, "some day you'll see an ad that just shows a beer coming out of a great big [crude euphemism for a vulva]."

Guess what? It's (sort of) finally happened:

Okay, it's a bar logo rather than an actual beer. But it's just as wrong.

This new low is brought to you by an Australian bar called Mordialloc Supper Club. The obvious plan to get free exposure through bad PR worked without even having to buy any media, as the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation used its licencing authority to ban the image from Mordialloc's web site and Facebook page.

The VCGLR's ruling states, "the promotion is not in the public interest as it objectifies the female body and the commission considers it is likely to offend the ordinary reasonable person" and threatened the bar with a $17,323.20 fine if it didn't remove the image from its digital assets. (It's still archived on their blog, however.)

Yeah, I know. I'm compounding the problem. But I'd rather call out what I see as the worst offences of my industry than just let them fester. This one isn't just conceptually and executionally lazy, it's also pretty offensive to women and the whole idea of childbirth.

Fashion brand adopts "will strip for attention" strategy

This could be the sleaziest use of sex in advertising that you will read about today. French fashion brand Vicomte A. hired Fred & Farid, Shanghai, to create an online campaign that allows users to undress a woman (or a man, apparently) by sharing promotions for items of clothing.

The portfolio video claims incredible success: >150,000 Facebook shares; >300,000 Twitter accounts accessed; 150% increase in Facebook "likes" and a fivefold increase in traffic to their e-commerce site:



Hey, waitaminute! Isn't something missing here? Sales figures?

Getting people to share information for a reward — whether is be voyeurism, altruism, or even just looking cool —is easy. The real problem is one of conversion.

Online fundraisers know only too well that you can emotionally trigger a user to share your cause, but you can't make them open their wallets. Using sex in advertising for attention is another part of the same problem. You can get tonnes of earned media and shares by titillating and outraging the internet with blatantly sexualized images of people, but to sell product you still have to brand and convinced based on that products actual benefits. Even a fashion brand, which depends on intangibles like cool factor, has to be able to deliver by providing great looks and a label that will impress peers.

This is French fashion. It looks pretty good. But check out the prices:

I'm going to hazard a guess that this campaign — which owed its viral success to men who had nothing better to do than to show all their friends they were willing to prostitute their social media persona for a peek at online nudity — was not well-enough targeted to people actually willing to shell out $383 USD on a goddamn pair of pants.

Sure, they'll click a call-to-action. But where are the sales?

Tip via Ads Of The World

Gap makes love out of hate

Via HuffPo

A Gap ad, featuring American actor and jewelry designer Waris Ahluwalia, was recently defaced by some racist in the NYC subway:

Via Arsalan Iftikhar (Twitter)

Gap actually responded quite well to the notification. First, they asked to know where the defaced ad was spotted (presumably to have it fixed without delay). Then they made their support of the Sikh community even more visible, placing the ad their feature image on both Twitter and Facebook.

The response has been phenomenal. A grassroots "Thank You, Gap" campaign has sprung up on Facebook and Twitter. Mr. Ahluwalia himself posted this pic on his own account:

Love wins, this time, on the social media battlefield.

Buzzfeed gets sucked into the "pro-life" movement

We all love and hate Buzzfeed, to various extents. The community is mostly link-bait lists, with the occasionally in-depth post. And Copyranter is pretty cool.

But the very structure of Buzzfeed — a community with an insatiable hunger for new content, and upvoting by members, makes it vulnerable to organized political takeover.

And that's what has apparently happened with the "personhoodusa" account. Political posts like 8 "Outrageous Things Planned Parenthood Was Caught Doing" and "5 Incredible Videos Of Life In The Womb" are appearing in the stream alongside "27 Everyday Decisions That Twentysomethings Are Really Bad At Making" and "The Spiedie Is A Perfect And Important Sandwich".

I'm sure Buzzfeed is just trying to stay out of anything serious, but considering they have a dedicated LGBT section, people might have assumed they were pretty progressive. Now that the anti-abortion posts are starting to cause some blowback, it will be interesting to see how they respond.

Hanes tries to hijack a cancer meme, fails

Remember those silly slacktivist things where women were writing the colour of their bra or panties on Facebook to "raise awareness" of associated cancers? So does someone working for Hanes.

AdFreak's Rebecca Cullers writes:

Hanes is asking women to overshare on social media by telling the world the color of their undies. They're pretending that revealing your panty color is some sort of slightly salacious act, and they're willing to offer you free undies if you do it, though it's pretty clear that the whole thing is cleverly disguised market research into preferred panty colors. 

The interactive site over at undercovercolor.com is not super exciting. It asks you to choose a colour from a colour wheel (that oddly includes neither white nor black nor "nude" options)

There's not much else to say about this campaign except that stealing an (old) idea from grassroots social media memes is rather cynical. And pretending talking about panty colour is edgy, in our present age of fetish porn and commando wardrobe malfunctions, is beyond disingenuous.

Canada Day rebranded as "Moving Day" for Best Buy in Quebec

That was the flyer those of us in the RoC ("Rest-of-Canada") got for last weekend's holiday sale. But if you live in Quebec, you got one of these:

National advertisers are often told that Canadian patriotism doesn't sell as well in Quebec, especially among those who see the province's founding European-descended population as a unique and separate nation. But the big electronics retailer may have failed to understand that this kind of anti-Canada strategy — especially on the one day when most Canadians are fiercely proud of themselves — tends to enrage federalists everywhere.

You can enjoy the PR meltdown on their Facebook page. Here are some highlights (that didn't involve anti-French trolling):

Their French web site, by the way, has this:

Danielle Jang, spokeswoman for Best Buy, gave this hilarious response to CBC News:

"Like every year, we feel it is important to recognize the Moving Day holiday in Quebec because it is a significant day in this market and it's the only place in Canada where this happens. We want to celebrate and recognize this as an important day."

Developing...

Tip via Consumerist (because I was too busy celebrating... errr... "Moving Day"... to keep up with the local news.)

Disney: Girls need heroes, boys need to be them

What is it with kids' t-shirts?

This time, Disney is in trouble with the internet over some licensed Avengers shirts for children:

The Disney Store is selling Avengers t-shirts for women with the slogan "I Need a Hero" and "I Only Kiss Heroes," and an Iron Man t-shirt for boys that reads "Be a Hero." This sends a harmful message about who can and cannot be a leader in this world. These shirts promote the idea that men and boys are meant to do the saving, and that women and girls are the ones who need to be saved.

This is from a Change.org petition by MissRepresentation.org. They are, quite understandably, pissed off at the primitive sexism.

Ironically, Marvel comics has a long history of including (at least token) strong women superheroes in the original comic series. Even the movie includes Black Widow.

The shirt for girls only shows male characters as "heroes" and there doesn't seem to be a hero version for girls.

#agencylife is way more fun than agency life

Yesterday, my friends at Adland started a fun hashtag thing on Twitter. Called #agencylife, it was inspired by one Adlander's complaint about a typical agency problem. Soon, everyone was doing it.

It became a thing. So much so that AdAge reported on it, asking "are folks just having a laugh or sharing some harsh truths about the industry?"

the answer is, "both". The hashtag brought together creatives and suits, large and small agencies, from countries all over the world. There are no secrets being shared here, just the kind of in-jokes that any industry breeds due to the day-to-day demands of trying to please everybody and manage a stable full of clashing egos.

I was really happy to see one of my contributions make the AdAge post:

Creative Director uses the non-words "virality" "sharability" and "memification" in the same sentence. With a straight face. #agencylife
— Tom Megginson (@CreativeTweets) April 11, 2013

Even better was the response I got from Noise Digital:

Challenge accepted RT @creativetweets: Creative Director uses the non-words "virality" "sharability" and "memification" in the same sentence
— Noise Digital (@NoiseDigital) April 12, 2013

To which I responded:

@noisedigital #Vine it or it didn't happen. :)
— Tom Megginson (@CreativeTweets) April 12, 2013

And then this happened:

@creativetweets BOOM! Proof that virality, sharability and memification are real. vine.co/v/btYri5F69hD #agencylife
— Noise Digital (@NoiseDigital) April 12, 2013

There's nothing like a Twitter support group to make another week in advertising worthwhile.

Maybe this ironic contextual ad placement is a good thing

This was supposed to be a post about something else. Over the weekend, Twitter user @mazface posted  a picture of a card for sale at a British Halmark store that seemingly ripped off the sexist "demotivator" parody poster above.

The Demotivators meme has been around for years. A company called Despair Inc. sells hilarious parodies of those cliché motivational posters that showed up in offices and gyms back in the '90s. It's a very old joke, but for a decade or so Despair Inc. has also allowed users to make their own demotivational posters using a generator app. Just like with meme generators, by giving anyone the ability to create professional-looking captioned images online, it has become a default medium for making and sharing jokes of varying quality.

So anyway, if Hallmark is selling cards printed with a stolen, sexist, and rather weak joke, that's shameful. But let's get back to the screencap at the top for 500Motivators, which came up in a Google search for the source image.

Because I Am A Girl is a global campaign to promote gender equality in the developing world by supporting the provision of education and resources to girls in need. I really like this cause. I've written about their Canadian ad campaigns, and my son sponsors a girl through the program. 

The fact that BIAAG Canada's Google ad was served up on this site isn't particularly remarkable. But that it appeared above this particular image is.

You could call it a contextual "fail" —  I won't. The internet is full of this garbage. But seeing an ad for a girl-positive movement in such a space reminds me of activists and social workers who brave wretched hives of scum and villainy to provide a positive message of hope. 

Girls are the answer. Not only to poverty, but also to the internet's obsession with women as sex objects.

Hijacking Katy Perry's breasts for a cause?

FCKH8.com is one of the many causes I follow on Facebook. They're a pretty in-your-face LGBT advocacy group, originally formed to fight California's homophobic Prop 8 with joyful profanity.

I was a little disappointed at this tactic, however.

The topless pic was nicked from a 2010 photoshoot by Yu Tsai for Esquire UK.

The Facebook post reads:

KATY PERRY: "I am a gay activist & I say that proudly. I voted no on Prop 8, of course. I definitely believe in equality."
♥ 10% Off "STR8 Against H8" & "Chicks Marry Chicks" Tees, Tanks & Hoodies w/ Code "LOVE" @ http://FCKH8.com/"LIKE" the Cause on FB FCKH8.com

Here's the thing. FCKH8 are fighting the good fight. But using other people's work — and other people's likenesses — without permission is not cool. Especially when you're using their sexuality to sell your own t-shirts.

Second, using a woman's breasts to get attention is not exactly progressive marketing. Even if she says she's an ally.

You can do better, folks. You're too big for this.

Wedding photographer claims her work was stolen for a "quickie marriage" radio contest

Ottawa wedding photographer Barbi Guild Cameron took to Facebook recently, claiming that local radio station HOT 89.9 took one of her photos, without permission or payment, for use in a partnership marketing kit:

The new Hot 89.9 out of Ottawa Canada runs a contest every spring where by couples get married in the span of 24 hours. I think it is a horrible, horrible contest and devalues marriage. It is certainly a contest I do NOT want my name or branding associated with. Imagine my shock when I see my image on their media/marketing kit info that entices potential advertisers to the contest to pay big bucks to be a part of it.

The image is from the blog of Barbara Ann Studios, where it appeared in a 2009 post about the wedding location of Strathmere.

Ms. Cameron continues:

I contacted the the radio station and they did not immediately get back to me. So then I contacted their owner, NewsCap Radio (who own ALOT radio stations across the country). They contacted me immediately expressing that they take copyright issue VERY SERIOUSLY. Well, everything was very serious until I mentioned that they were to compensate me for the illegal use of my image (AND ALTERED USE I MIGHT ADD). That is when the email tone turned negative. 

The Vice President of NewsCap Radio offered me $40. When I turned him down, he emailed me the following: 

"Barb you were kind enough to provide us with a few definitions. Here is one I just looked up:extortionNOUN The practice of obtaining something, esp. money through force or threatsSYNONYMS Blackmail-exaction
You are obviously a very talented photographer, I would stick with that. Extortion is not your thing.CheersSB" 

If they would have approached me to use the image, we would have had a chance to discuss the commercial use of it (IF I allowed the use of the image in the first place). However, once the image is used, I am at the disadvantage because the image is already out there. 

I no longer want money from them. I instead want this story to be shared and shared and shared and shared. Maybe, just maybe, some marketing person at a company will read it and it will educate them to not STEAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY just because Google barfed it up on their screen. 

 I can only imagine the horror that someone who counts on wedding business felt when her work — and her clients — were used to promote a contest that in her opinion "devalues marriage".

If all the above is true, it's quite conceivable that some graphic designer at HOT 89.9 figured nobody would ever know if they "borrowed" an image for a piece that was never supposed to be seen in public. But it's the alleged reaction from the Newcap VP that is really troubling.

Let's see how this plays out.

Thanks to Marc A for the tip.

Subway location in France offers "straights only" Valentine's deal

Opposing Views reports:

A branch of the Subway chain in Angers, France was forced to close recently after a Valentine’s Day special was offered to heterosexual couples only. 

The store’s owner put up a poster advertising a meal deal for couples that included a footlong Subway sandwich, a drink and a dessert each for 14 Euros. Bracketed next to the word “couples” were the letters “H/F,” indicating a couple was defined as a man and woman only. 

Also on the poster was an asterisk that read: “Discrimination (?) No, the marriage for all law has advanced, but has yet to be ratified by the Senate. Until then, I’ll use my freedom of expression.”

The special offer was apparently made by a rogue franchisee, and spent Subway France spinning on Twitter and Facebook.

On Saturday, when the news had gone global, they even posted in English on their Facebook page:

As we stated in response to many posts yesterday: The SUBWAY ® brand is strongly committed to maintain the values ​​of diversity and inclusiveness in its restaurants around the world and does not endorse in any discrimination of any kind . , we apologize to all the people being offended by individual initiative to promote Valentine's Day a restaurant in Angers, France. All SUBWAY ® restaurants are owned by franchisees and are managed independently. We work with the owner of the restaurant in order to strengthen our values ​​and company policy.

The French National Assembly recently approved a law that would legalize same-sex marriage and give the same rights to all married couples to adopt children. Although the legislation has met with organized protest, a recent poll indicated that 63% of French citizens support equal marriage.

But not, apparently, that one rogue sandwich artist who caused his brand a massive embarrassment.

Ontario teachers hijack the message on anti-union political petition

Ontario Conservative opposition leader Tim Hudak wants to redefine the job description for teachers, requiring them to spend time outside teaching hours doing extra meetings and paperwork (removing any right to work-to-rule) and changing the teacher payscale to punish those who do not "volunteer" for extracurricular activities. As the husband of a teacher (and a supporter of labour rights) I am against this. But what I'm here for is a lesson on unintended consequences in social media.

The Nepean-Carleton Progressive Conservative Riding Association have launched a petition, "Students Deserve Better," that aims to gather public support for their education platform, which will be a major issue in the upcoming election. The petition also had an invitation to send union leaders a message, which would be automatically displayed on the site. The hope was, I assume, to show a public outcry against "union bosses" (democratically elected by teachers) telling teachers to work to rule (which they had voted to do by an overwhelming majority).

The message almost immediately got hijacked by teachers:

By noon today, the comments column was completely dominated by pro-union comments like that above. Dozens of them. By 12:40, the administrator had removed the comments as well as the e-mail messaging form.

(I wish I had collected more of them before my last refresh — let me know if you have screencaps!)

The petition itself is a bit of a mess now. It doesn't even tell you how many have signed. But the easy takeover of its message, through an effort coordinated by pro-teacher social media, is a lesson some nameless political social media "guru" will not soon forget.