This Mormon morality video is all kinds of awkward

This bizarre video, produced for male students at Brigham Young University, is making the rounds of social media. It's awkward, it's painfully slow, and it's actually kind of offensive when you consider how a serious issue such as the mental health of veterans is being exploited to try to convince young men to help their friends stop looking at porn and touching themselves sexually:



The voiceover, according to Business Insider, is delivered by Brigham Young University-Idaho President Kim B. Clark.

I don't have much to add to the internet mockery free-for-all that this video well deserves, except to share the unintentionally hilarious "about" description from the official YouTube channel:

Strange, violent, shaver adds from Saudi Arabia

These ads by Bold Creative Boutique, in Riyadh, compare precision shaving to precision slaughter of what look like unarmed civilians by Roman soldiers:

I know there are cultural differences in advertising, but considering this one was translated into English and submitted to Ads of The World, an international point of view is warranted. And the view from here is, "WTF?!?"

Remembrance Day is not a marketing angle

Today, November 11, is a day when we stop for a moment and remember all the men and women who gave their lives in combat for what they thought would be a better world.

I take this moment pretty seriously. Rather than getting swept up in the more sentimental trappings of the public observation, I simply try to imagine myself, my son, my wife, or other loved ones in the tranches. Killing. Suffering. Dying.

But everyone has their own way to remember, and that's fine. Unless you try to use the day to sell people something:

I'm actually a big fan of Mill St's beers. But I may have to reconsider that if they don't soon acknowledge that this was a tasteless move by their Ottawa Twitter person, apologize, and try to make it right.

Developing...

Update: 

(Ignore the timestamps, they're just from when I screencapped the Tweets)

Weak, but at least it's responsive.

Amnesty ad compares arms trade to tsunami disasters

(Cross-posted at Osocio)


Oh, dear. Remember this fiasco?

Created by DDB Brazil for WWF Brazil, it ignited a firestorm of protest, which WWF's international office first disavowed, then admitted may have been the approved regionally. On this year's September 11th anniversary, Buzzfeed's Copyranter named it #1 in his list of "The Five Worst 9/11 Exploitation Ads".

You could say that it simply tells an inconvenient truth about inconsistent cultural attitudes towards tragedy and death. But that point would be made at the expense of causing further hurt to the families of the World Trade Centre attack, as well as to those deeply affected by it.

Now, strangely, the 2005 tsunami tragedy that is being exploited to make a point about war and the arms trade:

The ad is by TBWA, Paris, for Amnesty International.


This brings the saga of over-produced, tragedy-exploiting ads full circle: "an epic and tragic natural disaster killed more people than an infamous terrorist act, but the arms trade is even worse."

(Admittedly, it could also be a reference to the more recent Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.)

Once again, creatives go for maximum impact to make one message of human loss at the cost of trivializing another. This kind of trade-off is a devil's bargain, in my opinion. It's all bad. You don't need to get into a comparison of which is worse. From my perspective this looks like lazy strategy and the elaborate (yet derivative) execution is blatant award-bait.

And I say this as a member of Amnesty. You can do better than this. You often do.


Tip via Ads of the World

Canadian focus groups shocked by topless statues on WW I memorial shown on $20 bill

Journalists really have to stop basing their coverage of political issues on Access to Information requests for focus group results.

Here's a scoop: sometimes, focus group participants say stupid things.

Case in freaking point: CTV reports that focus groups shown Canada's new $20 bill design complained about "pornographic" images of partially nude women and "the twin towers" from 9/11.

They were looking at an engraving of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France, a world famous monument to First World War Canadian soldiers killed or presumed dead in France who have no known grave.

And, being a neoclassical kind of monument, it includes naked boobies:

Oh! The humanity.

I would like to ask the journalistic community to please stop making Canadians look so ignorant.

Also, nudity in currency notes is classy.

What the Falklands, Argentina? #FdAdFriday

Oh, my. Argentina really is poking the bear. (Or rather, the bulldog.)

In this new spot for Argentina's Olympic team, field hockey captain Fernando Zylberberg run through the Falklands, and (according to Yahoo! News) ends his workout "on the island's Great War Memorial, which honours British sailors who died in World War I".

The tagline then claims the islands as "Argentine soil"...

For those of you not born yet 30 years ago, at the time Great Britain and Argentina went to war over the desolate British territorial islands off the southern coast of South America. 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel and three Falkland Islanders died during the conflict, which the Brits won.

Argentina has never given up its claim to the islands, however, and has been making increasingly threatening statements about having another go at them.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague was unimpressed by this attempt to politicize the Olympics:

"Of course in Britain we remain absolutely steadfast in our support for the self determination of the Falkland Islanders and we will always support that," he added.

"It is a rather sad stunt, it won't impress anybody in the world. We are not do going to take any actual action in response to it."

In times like these, comedy means war

The escalating tensions between Israel and Iran have been a concern for some time now. In the midst of this, the Israeli cable company, HOT, produced an ad featuring a comedy team from the popular sitcom Asfur being summoned to Iran by an undercover Mossad agent.

The video is subtitled, and the YouTube post contains a glossary of all the cultural context, slang, and double meaning used in the ad.



You might put this down to typical culture-bashing between enemies, which Iran must be used to by now. But the video also featured a Samsung tablet. And that, to Iran, means war. With South Korea?

According to Haaretz:

"On Thursday, a top Iranian lawmaker said Iran's parliament was considering to cut the country's trade ties with the country, over what he said was an "insulting" commercial, over the depiction of Iran as a "primitive society" and of insinuating that Israel was 'powerful enough to easily destroy Iran's nuclear facilities or assassinate the country's nuclear scientists.'

Head of Majlis Energy Committee Arsalan Fat'hipour told Press TV that Samsung chose to forget the high volume of trade it shares with Iran in its attempt to move closer to Israel, adding that Samsung's apology to Iran, 'though necessary', would not be enough to patch things up with Tehran. 

In response to Iran's claims, Samsung released a statement condemning the production of the commercial by the firm's Israeli branch, with Samsung's Tehran office saying that the spot had nothing to do with the firm and that it had been produced by HOT. "

Silly comedy segments starting trade wars. These are truly very tense times we are living in. The spot has the same cultural arrogance and casual racism that we see in American lampoons of the Middle East, but Iran seems more pissed off by the implication that Israel can wipe out its facilities so easily. I wonder if this is what the international mood was like back in the summer of 1914?

Thanks to Tatjana for the tip

F'd Ad Fridays: Amnesty International tries a classic Bugs Bunny trick

Via IBiA

In this case, let's hope it works.

The war on loose women

Social marketing has been with us a long time. It just went by other names, like "propaganda".

Buzz Feed just posted a collection of Second World War posters warning soldiers about the dangers of venereal disease from prostitutes and "procurable women".

Note how the first batch basically vilify the women as a secret enemy, while the last two put more onus of responsibility on male self-control and honour:

Ninety-eight percent?

If you sleep with a hussy, you're boning HITLER.

The pulp fiction cover style is actually kind of awesome.

This one has a Disney feel. She looks like the mirror in Snow White.

French girls: bags of trouble.

Wow. She really gets around.

Must... not... give in,,,

Friends don't let friends swive drunk.

There are more examples, including homefront messages, here.

An open letter to the Can, on its 200th birthday

Dear Can,

Has it already been two centuries? You're still so full of beans!

I can't tell you how much you have changed my world. For marketers, you are the great-grand-daddy of packaged goods. But you are much more than that.

Your father, French inventor Nicolas Appert, must be so proud. That is, if he weren't long dead. And if his idea hadn't been patented instead by an Englishman.

But you, my friend, opened up a huge can of whup-ass on history. Before you, armies and explorers were limited by their ability to source fresh food. According to CBC's Peter Nowak, author of Sex, Bombs and Burgers, the Emperor Napoleon himself started the can rolling by offering a prize to anyone who could come up with shelf-stable food for his troops. By the second decade of the 19th Century, European armies were marching all over the world fuelled by tinned meat.

Oh, wait a sec. Does that mean you're responsible for Victorian colonialism? Ouch. That's got to keep you up at night.

That, and the murder of the Franklin Expedition. Well, I suppose I can't blame you for experimenting with lead solder in your youth. We've all had our toxic moments.

But you've had your successes, too! Consider SPAM. (No, scratch that.) OK, how about creamed corn? Oh,wait, I've got it. Your finest achievement was preserved for all time in art:

Those iconic images, and the comfort foods they represent, more than make up for some of your more embarrassing moments:

And yet here you are, 200 years later, rocking food preservation from soup to nuts. But I have some bad news for you, my old friend. Today you still form the staple of my pantry and my emergency preparedness kit. But the end may be near.

You see, the space age brought some changes to food packaging. It's taken 40-odd years, but now tetra packs and soft foil "retort pouches", pioneered by NASA, are really starting to take off. You may be recyclable these days, Can, but you're heavy and awkward (aren't we all, when we're older?) and you cost a lot to move around. I'm afraid we'll be seeing much less of each other in the future.

But this is not a goodbye, Can. Not yet. Whether or not you embrace my tomatoes a few years from now, we'll always have beer.

It bears repeating...

I missed the original broadcast, but apparently the U.S. Air Force Reserve ran this ad during the Super Bowl (link HERE - via AdFreak)

Don't look for it on YouTube, or on the Reserves' recruiting site, in the news, or almost anywhere else. It's essentially been scrubbed from the Internet.

Why? If you're a White Stripes fan, you probably have a clue. From their site:



Despite the damning move of having eliminated the offending spot with extreme prejudice, the Air Force issued an official statement: "We had no intention to use existing music from The White Stripes or any other performer. Any similarity to them or other artists was certainly not intentional."

I don't buy it. I've been doing this long enough to know that clients and agencies do get "inspired" a little too literally by copyrighted material when scoring new ads. Particularly after finding out that the artist they wanted to use is either too expensive, or refuses to sell out.

Just five years ago, Tom Waits sued General Motors Corp. and McCann Erickson over an Opel ad that used a singer and musicians imitating his trademark style (after he turned them down).

For those of you unfamiliar with the White Stripes, here's the original song.

Judge for yourself:

Thinking of you

Today's the day that we stop for a minute to forget deadlines and office politics, and think about something real. So we step out of our comfortable cublicles and living rooms to remind ourselves that war is not a movie, a video game, or even a memory. It is about real soldiers killing each other, real civilians dying, and real families left behind — generation after generation.

There are several things you can do to help:

Join the conversation at Canada Remembers on Facebook

Help children affected by war at War Child

Find out what you can do for our military people at Canadian Forces Personnel and Family Support Services

And to those who have served, thank you.