Bell sets a grease trap for students with delicious #poutine

Bell poutine may not appear exactly as pictured

Since you can't give free beer to students to get them interested in your brand, Bell Canada is delivering the next best thing:

Hey @uOttawa students, we're offering free poutine today. Find our truck on campus between 10:30am and 3:30pm. pic.twitter.com/c0Y8Oc61i3
— Bell (@Bell) September 12, 2014

Okay, so this is not exactly helping students achieve a healthy lifestyle on campus. But I certainly ate my share when I went to Queen's U in Kingston.

Offering swag to students is an old marketing trick, but at least this one is for a service that they actually need. (As opposed to giant home theatre rentals or credit they won't be able to pay back.) And I'm sure they'll work off the calories come exam time.

Someone please let me know if there's a PETA protest.

F'd Ad Fridays: Selling drugs on campus

What a very, very bad idea:

Red Bull's back-to-school campaign promotes itself with this line:

In my parents' day, many students popped "diet pills" to improve academic performance. Everyone knows they drink lots of coffee and Coke. But is it really ethical to promote your stimulant-laden drink (not to mention all that sugar) to students as a way to have more fun in school?

Using stimulants to pull all-nighters is a bad idea. Mixing Red Bull with vodka to party all night is also a bad idea. Yes, students commonly do both of these things. But using their stupid susceptibility to high-risk behaviours as a way to market an energy drink is really, really evil.

Fartvertising

The world's oldest recorded joke is a fart joke, from 1900 BC, so I guess they will always be with us.

Add some advertising students to the mix, and you get this campaign from Cuca Escola de Criativos, in Brazil (via AoTW):

Tagline: "Life is hard. Prepare your stomach." It's for an antacid.

Cute campaign, kids. It's a gas.

Them #@*% kids

When I was at Queen's University, the big issues in student activism were stamping out sexism and racism on campus, environmental damage, sexual violence, raising money for third world causes, censorship, suicide, drug abuse and binge drinking.

If only I had gone to Onondaga Community College, just across the lake in Syracuse, N.Y. Because if spitting, smoking, swearing, littering and double parking are the worst problems the students in this online PSA face, their lives are charmed indeed.



Okay, I'm being a smartass. As reported in USA Today, this "Create Change" campaign was developed by Onondaga's administration as a way to encourage students to take pride in their college and create an atmosphere of positive peer pressure against "habits that suck".



Creatively, the video is too long (5:15) and relies on a very hackneyed editing gimmick. But it was produced by the student drama club, so at least it's authentic peer-to-peer PSA messaging.

To me, it seems like an application of Broken Window Theory. Or it could just be an attempt to instill some old-fashioned manners in the young. Either way, I give it an "A" for good intentions, but I wouldn't bet money on the outcome.