Adrants reader Mike sent us this manifesto on why sex and advertising are two pools that just shouldn't mix. Apparently sex in advertising is an assault on religious freedom, a form of lying and prostitution, and a contributing reason why consumers are covetous. The central authority is the Bible, from which twelve reasons are outlined on why it's totally illogical and immoral to attach a luscious naked body or lascivious thought to ... well, burritos, for example.
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If you ever find yourself watching some obscure local TV station late at night in your hotel room while on some lame business trip in some lame city with your lame co-workers to pitch some lame client some lame new work your agency's done for them and a commercial like this one comes on, you just might quit your job immediately and enroll at The Viral Learning Center. Yes, you too can become a viral video expert.
At the Learning Center, you'll learn important viral video tactics such as filming yourself sitting at your desk, the art of falling, hurting animals, using animals to hurt people, working with excrement and vomit and "many more." This hilarious DRTV spoof takes whacks at both the DRTV genre and viral video itself all to promote, yes, a website that's all about viral video called Ziddio. It's one of those "we pay you for your video" site. Kind of like Revver with wit. American Copywriter points.
PETA recently launched PETA Kids in an attempt to make the volatile group more kid-friendly. The site is loaded with fun little ways to propagandize the usual message, like stencils to decorate the nearest public loo with images of animals begging "love me" - yes, like a psychotic ex.
PETA is also promoting Fast Food Nation and Happy Feet, which happens to be in bed with Tamiflu, which, by the way, is now linked to sometimes fatal but generally psychotic behavior among kids.
Clearly PETA has not done its homework about children the way it has with pigs, puppies and penguins. Want to cozy up to kids? Liaise with companies that aren't already liaising with companies that happen to be compelling your target demographic to fling themselves off condo balconies. Isn't that, like, common knowledge? - Contributed by Angela Natividad
The late Sailor Jerry, godfather of crass-but-classy American tattooing, launched a clothing line some time ago. Now Gyro Worldwide joins forces with them to make the brand, "a working-class American cookout" (we swear the CEO said this), relevant to a new generation.
Designs feature graphics unique to sailor tat subculture: anchors, mermaids, buxom women and even tight-fisted knuckle statements on gloves. We like how there's a section marked "Rum Stuff."
Glimpse the new Sailor Jerry campaign here and here and here. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
Here's a weird ad in which Japanese businessmen travel around what looks like the MidWest to share Nintendo Wii with families, transients and college students. "Wii ... would like to play," one says with an impish smile that's almost a twitch.
The pair bow low and suddenly people's lives are changed - white control in hand they're bowling, running, jumping, even lassoing - essentially everything they could do anyway if only they'd pick their asses up off the couch and leave the house for a few hours.
But no. They'll probably all get Wii'd instead. Oh, haha. We made a funny. Get it? Wii'd? You get it, right? There's a promising commercial in there somewhere. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
To promote some new vehicles whose names we won't even bother to look up, Honda creates a destination on Myspace upon which people can get ranked a la Hot-or-Not and compete for the coveted title of MySpace Ultimate Profile. The page already has over 23,000 friends. Submissions include the usual indie-whoring hipsters and children. Enter yourself though you might be offset by the eight-year-old with the souped-up Civic. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
A cable company pitch is a cable company pitch is a cable company pitch. But in Geico's signature style, Comcast is throwing out a little off-colour, slightly befuddling humour to add some shuffle to the deck.
The bowling mermen serve as good representatives of what we're seeing from Comcast lately. And if Youtube is any indication, people think it's awesome. So here's to thinking outside the box and into someone else's playbook. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
This Georgia Pacific site, GPTimeMachine, is designed to show how long the companies products last by providing viewers a virtual time machine through which they can check out a house ten years into the future to see how it's holding up. Nice concept but the execution is extremely goofy and corny. So much so that it actually might be good though we remain undecided on that front.
This is one of those ingredient branding things that always makes us wonder why companies bother doing it. Obviously it must work or else Intel wouldn't still be doing it. Unless your a geek or a detail freak, you likely don't give a crap what sort of chip is inside your computer or what kind of wood is used to build your house. We could see this Georgia Specific thing being targeted at home builders but we'd really like to see what results come from this consumer-focused, ingredient-branding approach Georgia Pacific has taken. Do tell. Numbers please.
- Games, games and more games. This one promotes cbcampus.com, an entity that helps hook up college grads with their first job.
- On Friday, November 24th, 2006, branded entertainment TV network Spot TV will offer YouTubers a sneak peak.
- Whether it's related to that video or not, things continue to go not so well for Agency.com. The heads of the New York and San Francisco offices have left.
CMM News points to a Sydney Morning Herald article which calls to our attention the odd proliferation of videos on YouTube that show women smoking. Now that wouldn't be so weird except for the fact that in many of the videos, that's all they're doing: glamming on the cam while puffing away seductively. Sydney University School of Public Health Professor Simon Chapman viewed many of the 27,000 smoking-related videos on YouTube and while he acknowledges the videos could simply be an innocent social phenomenon, Chapman also wonders whether it's a clandestine effort by tobacco companies to promote smoking's cool quotient.
While tobacco advertising in America has been severely limited, it's been completely outlawed in Australia since 1992. Whether or not any tobacco company is behind this is likely to remain a mystery. A Philip Morris rep neither confirmed or denied involvement in with the video and said the company adheres to local laws and Internet advertising to minors should be banned. YouTube declined to comment for the story. While we find it hard to believe tobacco companies have any involvement in this and there's plenty of not-so-glamorous smoking videos to back up that belief, stranger things have certainly happened regarding this industry's marketing efforts.
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