Kid Films & Big Pharma Mingle on Flu Facts

flu_PENGUINS.bmp

There’s been some longtime discomfort about Happy Feet, a penguin-centred love story that whored it out behind the scenes with any company willing to toss bills in its direction. (Seriously. It has a lot of sponsors.)

Among its largest suitors – er, sponsors is Roche, seeking to promote its spankin’ new anti-flu drug Tamiflu. This is the first liaison ever between a pharmaceutical company and an animated film.

Roche just launched a campaign for a site called Flu Facts. Incestuously, Happy Feet penguins on billboards refer families to Flu Facts and Flu Facts in turn refers back to Happy Feet. There’s even a zip code function in which you can find out if the flu is in your area.

Which area isn’t it in? Guess if penguins need Tamiflu then we all do. – Contributed by Angela Natividad

Picture of Steve Hall

Steve Hall

RECENT ARTICLES

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

A psychologist explains why people who’ve found inner peace often seem disengaged or distant to their families — they’re not checked out, they’ve stopped absorbing everyone else’s emotional dysregulation as a personal responsibility to fix

A psychologist explains why people who’ve found inner peace often seem disengaged or distant to their families — they’re not checked out, they’ve stopped absorbing everyone else’s emotional dysregulation as a personal responsibility to fix

Global English Editing

Psychology says people over 60 who still play CDs aren’t resisting technology — they’re protecting a ritual that required intention and commitment and the act of holding an album and choosing it is a ceremony that streaming destroyed by making every song equally weightless and their refusal to let go is a refusal to let music become background noise in a life where too much is already disappearing

Psychology says people over 60 who still play CDs aren’t resisting technology — they’re protecting a ritual that required intention and commitment and the act of holding an album and choosing it is a ceremony that streaming destroyed by making every song equally weightless and their refusal to let go is a refusal to let music become background noise in a life where too much is already disappearing

Global English Editing

I’m 37 and I’ve noticed that whenever there’s a crisis everyone turns to me like I have answers – and the hardest part isn’t solving the problem, it’s that nobody ever asks if I’m okay because they need me to be the steady one and I’ve forgotten how to be anything else

I’m 37 and I’ve noticed that whenever there’s a crisis everyone turns to me like I have answers – and the hardest part isn’t solving the problem, it’s that nobody ever asks if I’m okay because they need me to be the steady one and I’ve forgotten how to be anything else

Global English Editing

I’m 73 and I keep the television on from six in the morning until I fall asleep — not because I’m watching it, but because the sound of other people talking fills the exact shape of the silence my family left when they stopped needing this house, and some mornings a commercial says “good morning” before anyone real does

I’m 73 and I keep the television on from six in the morning until I fall asleep — not because I’m watching it, but because the sound of other people talking fills the exact shape of the silence my family left when they stopped needing this house, and some mornings a commercial says “good morning” before anyone real does

Global English Editing

Your Boomer mother didn’t stop having dreams when she had you — she just stopped mentioning them because every time she said “I used to want to” someone in the room made it about guilt, and eventually she learned that the safest place to keep an unlived life was inside a sentence that started with “it doesn’t matter anymore”

Your Boomer mother didn’t stop having dreams when she had you — she just stopped mentioning them because every time she said “I used to want to” someone in the room made it about guilt, and eventually she learned that the safest place to keep an unlived life was inside a sentence that started with “it doesn’t matter anymore”

Global English Editing

I’m 65 and I spent forty years believing retirement would feel like relief – instead it feels like I finally have permission to become the person I was too busy to be, and that freedom is terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure

I’m 65 and I spent forty years believing retirement would feel like relief – instead it feels like I finally have permission to become the person I was too busy to be, and that freedom is terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure

Global English Editing