Remember that Weatherproof billboard that had an image of President Obama on it? And ho much the White House hated it? Well, it's still up and AMC is taking advantage of that with a new billboard for its Breaking Bad drama.
The billboard features the drama's main character, Walt White (played by Bryan Cranston) against a backdrop of the Great Wall of China (just as Obama was pictured in the Weatherproof ad) wearing a gas mask. Mocking the Weatherproof ad, the AMC billboard headline reads, "You Got no Proof" followed by "A Dealer in Style."
Opportunistically witty. It's all to promote the upcoming third season of the series which premiers March 21.
Last week, a video billboard in Moscow was hacked for two minutes and the scheduled advertising was interrupted for two minutes with clips from a porn video.
If you simply must see what porn on a giant billboard looks like, there's a short clip here for your viewing pleasure. Yes, it's very NSFW.
Today the FBI has launched an electronic billboard in Times Square which will share with the world the FBI's Most Wanted. The effort was originally launched with 100 billboards in 23 cities across the country. Working with Clear Channel Outdoor, the agency now has access to 1,500 billboards in 40 states. The FBI has used billboards to catch criminals since 2007 and reports 30 cases have been solved as a result of publicizing fugitives.
A recently granted patent has given Google the ability to sell ad space on billboards through its Street View map product. Rather than a Street View user seeing the actual billboard image - in many cases months old - captured by the Google Street View vehicle, the person would see a digitally placed image purchased through the new system.
The patent explains how advertisers can replace their old images with digitally created new ones. It also describes a bidding system which could possibly allow for an advertiser who isn't using the board in real life to buy and apply a digital billboard over the advertiser who is using it in real life.
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Those Obamas are everywhere. Whether they like it or not. This time around, it's the President, himself, appearing, without consent, on a Times Square billboard for the garment company Weatherproof. It's an image of the President wearing one of the company's coats when he was standing on the Great Wall of China.
Weatherproof President Freddie Stollmack, who recognized the coat, told the New York Times, "With a magnifying glass, we saw our logo and zipper pull, and we said, 'That's our coat,'"
The image was properly licensed from the Associated Press but Weatherproof failed to obtain necessary permissions from The White House, which has a policy against using the President's image for commercial purposes, for use of the President's image.
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If you're happy and you know it clap your hands. If you're fat and you know it, slap an alien...because they are going to eat you first according to this latest cause-tagonistic ad from UK fitness center Cadbury House which states, "Advanced Health Warning: When the aliens come, they will eat the fatties first."
Apparently this ad, which was lifted almost verbatim from a 1999 Grey-created 24 Hour Fitness billboard, has the English up in arms. One women complained, saying, "I am not overweight yet I still find this extremely offensive and patronizing, but how much more so to someone genuinely overweight?"
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Now here's a store you don't expect to see at the mall. Like a steamroller crushing old-school Salvation Army bell ringers, The Red Cross has popped up a store in an upscale shopping center in Madrid. Created by Leo Burnett Madrid, the store contains pseudo books that contain bookmarks that remind people their contributions help make the story a happy one.
Many Spanish celebrities from Real Madrid's Álvaro Arbeloa and Ruben de la Red to gymnast Rafa Martinez to actor Miguel Hermoso showed up for the store opening. The store took in record breaking donations over its first weekend. It'll be up through the month of December.
Ski areas love to tout their snowfall. So why not employ some bathroom humor double entendre rather than the usual "we get tons of snow" boredom that usually passes for ski area advertising. From LA-based David&Goliath comes this outdoor campaign for Mammoth Mountain.
Using digital billboards and weather widget on the mountain's website, snowfall amounts are posted to the billboard in real-ish time. The euphemism for these updates are Dump Alerts.
"Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?" That's what Auckland's St Matthew-in-the-City Church Vicar Archdeacon Glynn Cardy told the New Zealand Press Association in response to complaints about a billboard the church erected.
The board, which shows Joseph laying in bed with Mary along with the caption, "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow," has been labeled "inappropriate" and "disrespectful" by the Catholic Church and others.
Supporting the rationale behind the board, Cardy said, "What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about." While he claims there were supporters of the creative direction, the board was defaced by detractors shortly after it went up.
Speaking for the opposition, Auckland Catholic Diocese Spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer said, "Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin and that Jesus is the son of God, not Joseph. Such a poster is inappropriate and disrespectful."
Blasphemy or call to challenge stereotype?
So you're laying on the beach enjoying yourself and suddenly you hear this. Do you really want to be reminded that all you're doing is increasing your chances of getting skin cancer? Well that's the goal of this creation from Sydney-based Three Drunk Monkeys which worked with singer/songwriter Ben Lee to create a five second message to be played at area beaches. Twenty different messages were created. Here's one.
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