An ad for a brothel in New Zealand, which recently legalized prostitution, is making some U.S officials a bit pissed off. The ad appeared in newspapers aimed to recruit, well, prostitutes to staff the brothel.
A U.S. embassy spokeswoman said: "We believe that any likeness of a national government symbol in a commercial advertisement is in extremely poor taste.
"We are sending a letter to the advertiser that expresses our disappointment and displeasure about their choice of symbolism."
The brothel in question is called the White House and it is emblazoned with American-like imagery. Brian Legros, owner of the White House defends his use of the flag crest in the ad saying, "It's my crest. It might look like theirs, but it's not." And, "They (the U.S.) should get on with the affairs of their country and not worry about little old New Zealand."
I guess he told the U.S. off.
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Smoking Gun provides us with a personal ad placed by Susan Smith. She was the South Carolina woman who killed her two boys by rolling her auto into a lake while the children slept in their car seats.
She wants to meet new people and gushes, "I have grown and matured a lot since my incarceration, but I will always hurt for the pain I've caused so many, especially my children."
Right.
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You've all seen Jewel's video in which she gets all "Britney'd out" and makes fun of our overy commercialized world where we are promo'd and logo'd to death. Well, the girl herself is now behind a new ad campaign for Schick. Or at least her music is. Her hit song, "Intuition" is the music bed in a television commercial for a new Schick razor of the same name.
Rob Walker wonders about Jewel's motivations and contradiction in this Slate article:
I don't think Schick can be faulted for latching itself onto the latest hit from a fairly popular artist. But I'm a little curious about what Jewel is up to. I have nothing against the song "Intuition"; I like the occasional unabashed pop tune. On the other hand, I think I like this one because it's the best Britney Spears song I've heard in ages. It's possible to overlook the mild hypocrisy of Jewel poking fun at a musical and video style by basically copying it and adding a half-hearted wink. But how to explain writing a song that tells us all to resist the total marketing mentality all around us, promoting it with a video that satirizes advertising, all the while urging us to just be ourselves�and then licensing that song to a consumer products company for a huge sales campaign?
Is it possible to be against something and also become wealthy because of it? Sure. This is America. Most things here are a hypocritcal contradiction and this is no different.
View the ad here.
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In a study that came out a while ago, BIGresearch asked about simaltaneous media usage as well as what people do when a commercial comes on TV. Not surprisingly, most people don't watch the ads.
"When asked when you watch TV and a commercial comes on, what do you do?
- 15.3% of population regularly leave the room
- 30.2% of population regularly mentally tune out
- 30.1% of population regularly watch, but not with full attention
- 30.8% of population regularly channel surf
- 32.4% of population regularly talk with others in the room or on phone"
So, what's an advertiser to do? Give in to media multitasking. Some of the BIGresearch findings, while focusing on the question of developing a model for media planning when there is simultaneous media usage, show that:
- 32.7% of males and 36.4% of females regularly watch TV when they go online.
- 23.8% of males and 29.1% of females regularly go on online when they are watching TV.
- 16.8% of males and 22.2% of females regularly watch TV when they read the mail.
Use the web. It works.
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Here's Amy Corr's run down on what's happening this week with new ad campaign launches. There's Annika for KFC, a Red Roof Bobblehead, a nice looking ad from 1800 Tequila, a new Smokey Bear PSA, a new website from Skyy Vodka, and more. Check it out here.
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Can you say "sneaker monopoly"?
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