Malala's inspirational story is now being used to sell mattresses

Advertising people have no goddamned shame.

Exhibit A: Ogilvy India's exploitation of Nobel Peace Prize nominee Malala Yousafzai, and the brave outspokenness that almost got her killed by terrorists, to sell mattresses.

Mattresses. Fucking mattresses.

The campaign also taps Mahatma Gandhi and Steve Jobs. But neither has the WTF factor of an ad featuring a 14-year-old getting shot in the face.

As seen on Ads of The World

Update: The Malala ad is no longer on AOTW. The Ghandi and Jobs ads are still there.
Update 2: Now they're all gone. Spec work? Angry client?
Update 3: It was real, and Ogilvy has apologized.

Is this the most dangerous ad of all time?

We complain quite often about ads that reinforce stereotypes, sexually objectify people, and promote bad lifestyle choices. But if a conspiracy-minded blogger is to be believed, this Vodaphone ad from Egypt may be at a completely different plane of evil:



Aljazeera describes the ad scenario, starring starring well-known puppet Abla Fahita:

Fahita and her daughter Karkoura search for her deceased husband's sim card, while explaining to her friend over the phone about another character "Mama Touta." In the background, a radio anchor explains how to make "stuffed turkey'' for Christmas while sitting next to a cactus from which ball ornaments were dangling. 

She said she asked the building guards to get a sniffer dog of a shopping mall to search for missing things and gets money in return.

Weird idea for an ad anyway,  but it gets weirder.

A pro-Mubarak, blogger, Ahmed “Spider," reported to Egypt's prosecutor general that the ad contained a coded message from the Muslim Brotherhood, including details of an upcoming terror attack at an unspecified shopping mall:

Spider explained the alleged code on the Al-Tahrir network on Tuesday night: the mall and the dog refer to the planned site of the attack, and "Mama Touta" is the Brotherhood's secret name. 

"The dog, garage, guard, mall and next to us these are elements tell us that there will be a big mall and an explosion after a dog fails to find the bomb in a car," Spider said. 

... 

His lawyer told another TV network, el-Faraeen, that an ornament on the cactus refers to the bomb. The cactus has four branches referring to Muslim Brotherhood group's Rabaah sign, commemorating the victims of a deadly crackdown on a protest camp held next to Rabaah el-Adawiya mosque in eastern Cairo. Rabaah is Arabic for "fourth" and is also a name.

Vodaphone described the accusations as "irrational," telling the Associated Press, "The advertisement carries no other meaning and any other interpretation other than that is mere imagination or personal opinion of some of the audience."

Prosecutors are investigating the allegations. This could get interesting, or it could be nothing. But at least 2014 is starting with some interesting advertising news.

Dear Brands: please stop appropriating terrorism

Never Forget pic.twitter.com/74Br2rBL3A
— AT&T (@ATT) September 11, 2013

Update: They apologized and the embedded Tweet was removed.

Here's a screencap.

It was a terrible thing. It killed a lot of people. It started wars. It forced us to give up a lot of freedoms.

But one thing is for sure: It did not happen so that brands could borrow interest from death.

I'm only picking on AT&T because it just showed up in my feed. Please share any others you see at the contact form below.

Awkward contextual ad on VIA terror plot news

Today, the RCMP announced the arrest of two men in connection with an "al-Qaeda-supported" plan to attack a VIA Rail passenger train in Canada. And this ad appeared above it.

This kind of thing actually happens all the time, from awkward grizzlies to PETA hamburgers. It's pretty much unavoidable in a major internet campaign.

A friend shared this unfortunate screenshot of a VIA ad above the CBC story. I can't seem to reproduce the combination through multiple refreshes, so I'll assume that VIA's media people caught it early. But not before someone else caught it for posterity.

For photographer Jonathan Hobin, tragedy is child's play

In the artist's own words:

In the Playroom is a metaphor for the impossibility of a protective space safe from the reach of modern media. The quizzical disposition of youth and the pervasive nature of the media are symbolically represented in Hobin’s images through tableau-vivant re-enactments of the very current events that adults might wish to keep out of their child’s world. Just as children make a game of pretending to be adults as a way to prepare and ultimately take on these roles in later life, so too do they explore things that they hear or see, whether or not they completely understand the magnitude of the event or the implications of their play.

 Okay, I get it. But I was eight when Jim Jones served that Guyana Kool-Aid to more than 900 men, women and children, and I don't recall wanting to re-enact it...

The 1981 Reagan assassination attempt, however, we did pantomime in the schoolyard. But mostly just because we were boys and, you know, guns. (Although the Lennon assassination was off bounds because we were such Beatles fans...)

See the whole series at Petapixel. (Mr. Hobin's site is presently offline.)