So yea. Britain's Advertising Standards Authority has received several complaints about a new American Apparel ad in Vice Magazine which features a young girl wearing shorts and a hoodie which, in one shot, almost exposes her nipple. The ASA upheld the complaint dubbing the ad "offensive and irresponsible" as the girl in the ad appeared to be under the age of 16.
According to American Apparel, the girl in the ad is 23 and the ad was meant to depict her relaxed in a "home" environment. But the ANA says the ad is inappropriate and must not appear again in its current form.
Inappropriate? How so? Hasn't everyone heard all girls sit around the house self shooting themselves? Have these complainers never visited a Facebook page? Or Webshots? Or Photobucket? Never seen a mirror shot? This is hardly racy compared to what's out there. Oops, this is an ad. Not some 14 year old boys afternoon "motivation."
OK so yea. Cover a bit more of the boobs and everyone will be fine with this.
Whoa. It's Thursday and we're just getting to Tuesday. Wait, what? You mean you don't realize it's Advertising Week? Of course you do and that also means you know it's a crazy week in the city of New York. There's only about 4,364 things to do everyday and it's hard to keep up. But, we do our best.
So on Tuesday MIXX held the second of its two day conference. The day was filled with informative session but all anyone cared about was seeing Ashton Kutcher who appeared at the end of the day to talk about his company, Katalyst Media, "a studio for social media creating original digital media, television and film properties." As Kutcher took the stage, hands were filled with digital devices capturing the moment as if it were a Jonas Brother concert - expect with less screaming and no jumping up and down.
At the end of the day, the IAB MIXX Awards were held. Saturday Night Live veteran Jim Breuer provided the humor and Best in Show was won by Tourism Queensland and CumminsNitro Brisbane for "The Best Job in the World," More on that here.
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The following is a guest editorial by Tom Parrette is Director of Verbal Branding at Addis Creson on AMC's Mad Men as it relates to the reality of the sixties.
I'll admit it upfront, so diehard fans of AMC's Mad Men are forewarned: I'm one of the few people who's not completely infatuated with the show. But as someone who does branding for a living, I'm intrigued by how it reconstructs the ethos of an era using brands and pop cultural references.
It seems like Mad Men is based on a simple conceit: an ad agency, which delivers manufactured views of the world to a mass market, is presented to us through the same lens. The show is itself an advertisement for the early 60s, where looks and labels surpass world events in terms of significance. The show's producer David Chase, quoted in The New York Times the month Mad Men debuted, described it this way: "Here was... a story about advertising in the 1960s, and was looking at recent American history through that prism."
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Yesterday Advertising Week kicked off and as part of the week, the Internet Advertising Bureau held its MIXX Conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Times Square. It was attended by about 1,000 people and the sessions covered the usual stuff. The exhibit hall bustled for a bit but it's a smallish conference compared to some of the others in the industry.
This smallness has its advantages though. You can actually find people you are looking for and can talk to them without being trampled by a herd of show bag-wielding conference Nazis whose sole goal is to make sure they shove their business card into the hands of anyone who will take it.
eMarketer's Geoff Ramsey gave another of his stellar, figure-filled sessions which was well attended and left the other two sessions, for the most part, empty and full of cob webs. Geoff always has the facts and figures. Always fills your head with more information than you can take causing you the rush the stage after the session and beg him to forward you the PowerPoint version of the presentation.
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OK so now we know why those silly little Smart cars exist. They're really not good for much and look like they'll blow over in the wind but cupcake maker Little Debbie has a use for them. The brand is launching a new cupcake and, along with a Facebook page, a 125,000 carton cupcake giveaway, a mobile tour, a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel, a Flickr photostream, event marketing, TV spots and blogger bribes..,uh...blogger outreach, will giveaway two Smart cars.
Se the spots here.
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Love the comments we get from readers.
Somebody claiming to be Kevin wrote:
Did you see the banner/display ad on the AdAge newsletter this AM? from Kleenex, "Help us keep our brand identity COMMA ours." And a click-thru to some dopey microsite.
misplaced comma
Are they friggin kidding?
Oops.
Is it just us or was it a really, really poor choice for Crest to hook up with Ryan Seacrest to pimp its new Crest Extra-White plus Scope Outlast? In two new commercials, Secreast uses the product and ends up attracting throngs of hotties like an Axe commercial. The dude just doesn't strike us as a lady's man. Don't know what it is but this isn't working for us.
Oh wait. Crest. Seacrest. Yea, that was too easy to pass up.
We're not really in love with this second outing for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and Unplanned Parenthood in which a Viagra commercial shoot is spoofed. It's just not that funny. Maybe it's because it's Advertising Week and we're expecting greatness. Oh wait. Advertising greatness? The two words don't even belong in the same sentence. Sorry about that.
Well anyway. Here it is.
- Maybe creating advertising isn't the only thing you create. If you've got creativity you want to share with the world, check out The Rogue's Gallery.
- Want to become an ad legend but don't want to wait around 40 years for it to happen? Check out Instant Ad Legend. Oh wait, it's just a portfolio for a couple of college students. Still check it out though. It's,,,well...it's OK.
- Love to wallow in the hideousness of bad creative? Bad over to the Bad Taglines Twitter stream. (Oops. It seems to have disappeared. Oh well.)
- The Cheesecake Factory has partnered with Feeding America for The 'Drive Out Hunger' Tour. Throughout the month of September, in support of Hunger Action Month, they'll be touring 30 cities in 30 days holding an event each day to collect cans of soup benefiting the local food bank
Not that a lot of us don't already know but if you've somehow managed to escape periods of jobless during your career in advertising, you really ought to exercise your empathy gene by watching The Sack. It's a video series which follows the travails of two out of work creatives from Melbourne. The series takes a look at what the pair went through from the point of sacking to (they fully intend) re-employment.
It's cheeky. It's fun. Give it a watch. And maybe even hire these guys.
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