Breast Ad For U.K.'s Easyjet Gets Stamp of Approval

A UK airline ad featuring a woman's breasts with the phrase 'discover weapons of mass distraction' was not offensive, ruled the country's Advertising Standards Authority.
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Hummer Gets The Spoof Treatment From Sierra Club

In the continuing saga of SUV bashing, the Sierra club has launched Hummdinger.com, a web site that parodies G.M.'s Hummer. The site was created by Experiment in St. Louis. and includes a "Hummer Hunk" quiz and a link to send a nasty note to G.M.
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Jason Kottke Rants About Ad Creep

Jason Kottke of Kottke.org refers to an article on the weblog, stating the obvious about potential future uses for Apple's iPod, including advertising, and laments the continual creep of advertising into his life.

Great idea and pretty much inevitable, but the suggestion of it makes me want to hop on a plane to SF and strangle the responsible party. I see ads when I pee. I pay to watch ads at the movie theatre. Most television programming is filler for advertising (which explains why most of TV sucks). Many magazines are mostly advertising. MTV is 100% advertising. The Post-It Notes on my desk are from Barclay's Capital. Clothing without prominent advertising printed on it is getting difficult to find. I am marketed to and advertised to everywhere I go. So now I'm supposed to sit through promotions -- while draining my battery, BTW -- each time I turn on my iPod?"

Jason does make a very valid point that advertising knows no limits. The current system of advertising is set up so that those of us in the business are mostly forced to do this sort of thing. So much so that we really begin to piss people off. At some point, everyone will just rebel and tune out.

Seth Godin has always talked about Permission Marketing in which the consumer gives permission to be marketed to but that model has not taken foot yet. It has not because there is no compelling reason for a consumer to actually want to be marketed to. Sure, there are a few advertisers out there who have the ability to be entertaining enough for consumers to opt in but mostly, advertising is crap. Until advertisers can hold an audience like a well crafted movie or at least have a compelling offer, permission marketing will not catch on and current mode of beating consumers over the head with a marketing sledgehammer will, unfortunately, continue.
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Annika Sorentam KFC Commercial Rated Highest in Brand Recall by IAG

Even though the ad was skewered by Ad Age's Bob Garfield who said KFC is "the perfect bucket of death-on-a-wishbone for a luscious, cardiovascularly incorrect food orgy", the spot is number one on IAG's Brand Recall Index for the week ending July 20.
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WNBA Star Cancels Spanking Wager With Radio Host

Sue Bird, 22 year old WNBA player, made a bet with radio host, Mitch Levy, that called for her to get spanked on air while yelling, "Harder, Daddy, harder" if her assist-to-turnover ration was higher than 2-1 by season end.

Well, she chickened out and cancelled her bet.

"She did it in fun and she did it with the best of intentions," said Bird's agent, Jimmy Gould. "She's terribly upset about it. She regrets it. She hopes people understand. She didn't stop to think about the impact she has on younger people and that she's expected to be more clear and thoughtful when making a statement like that, even though it was done in fun."

Seems everybody got all PC about the bet.

"It helps feed into the images of violence against women and stereotyping," Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle told Seattle Times sports columnist Steve Kelley. "I don't condemn her. I appreciate that she doesn't have the experience in life that other women have had. But this could be very hurtful. Not just to the WNBA, but to other women and girls."

So maybe spanking isn't good but this was a joke. It's humor. It's a stunt to get guys to go to WNBA games. Is that really so bad? And besides, she's hot.
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