Match.com swears if in six months you don't live out a love story with someone from its site, you can have six more months of free service to make up for it.
Not all tell-worthy stories end happily though. Sometimes you get locked out or hosed -- which, now that we think about it, isn't nearly as bad a fate as this one.
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Check out this warped Boots nipple cream ad that's pissing so many English interest groups off. If Tim Burton were a creative, such would be the fruits of his labour.
Oddly enough, the Advertising Standards Authority has decided the ad is fair game. In response to complaints about its misleading nature (creepy imagery aside), ASA said breast-feeding moms should be "reasonably well-informed" about the causes of sore nipples.
We love how Boots nipple cream escapes the wrath of UK Ad Nazis -- despite 19 complaints and weird copy about "wanting three nipples" -- but mascara gets the shaft every time.
Is it because people who focus on reading literature (and taking courses!) on sore nipples have neglected their "physics of eyelash enhancing" lessons?
Or is it because the Boots factory is bigger than your average ivy league?
Last week at Heathrow Airport we saw this thirst-inciting ad that read, "Fly with everything you buy from the departure lounge."
(And you really should buy alcohol.)
Adrants reader Atif sent us this spot, snapped by Engadget at CES 2008. It causes us physical pain.
Not to say every questionable piece doesn't have its audience. Atif thinks the veins as headphone wires idea is cool, actually.
After spending some time with Cheetos' new Orange Underground, a full blown movement "committed to transforming sterile order into messy mayhem," its primary purpose of urging people to do wacky Random Acts of Cheetos that don't involve eating makes perfect sense. After all, Cheetos aren't even food. They're just a bunch of man-made chemicals mixed together and placed in a bag. This campaign is much like the Mentos/Diet Coke thing whereby people were urged to perform all manner of chemical wizardry as opposed to actually consuming the products, both questionable, at best, as to whether or not they, too, are actual foods.
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Shake Well Before Use points us to Engadget's collection of the best of the worst ads seen at this week's CES conference. Predictably, one involves word play on big boobs. Check them all out here.
Yes, yes, Second Life is apparently alive. While haven't been there in months, commerce seems to be alive and well or at least the promotional aspects of commerce. Here's an ad campaign for Hang the DJ clothing shop. Just like in real life, Second Life virtual hotties model the shop's wares. While the men's t-shirts are likely to fit any average guy, it appears the women's t-shirts have to be specially sized to accommodate the huge breasts every female in SL seems to possess.
And you have to get a kick out of the odd juxtaposition of each male model's left hand appearing eerily between the crotch of the model to his left.
Either ingenious or just gross, Clearasil has placed a sticker that looks like a zit on German teen magazine stadtlichter. Created by Euro RSCG Duesseldorf, the sticker says "Get rid of it" and when removed from the magazine cover, the Clearasil brand is revealed along with the brand's website address.
Assuming teenagers still pick zits off their face, it's likely they'd be predisposed to pick one off a magazine cover as well. It seems they did according to Clearasil which reported a spike in website traffic during the run of the campaign.
The chief creative officer of Euro RSCG, Chicago gets gushy about five-letter words as part of a promotional campaign for Effen Vodka.
Got a lot of time on your hands? Download the campaign PDF. Never mind the "naughty" aspect; the number of adjectives alone made us blush. (And that's saying a lot.)
As the self-proclaimed experts on reviewing racy advertising, we think the word "Effen" is about as randy as a kid calling his uncle an "a-hole" in an uncontrollable fit of rage.
On the streets of East London, plastic heads are rolling. Blame the Decapitator, who is mutating ads for his/her own statement-making ends.
That image at left? It once was a cavity-sweet spot for High School Musical 2. And we can't even talk about what happened to that little bee from Bee Movie.
Headless bloody variants of smiling ad protagonists are applied to public posters with wheat paste, wethinks. Wired compares the work to that of New York's Splasher, who was eventually suspected of working under contract for American Apparel.
There's something romantic about street appropriations of ad messages. But marketer-on-marketer violence? That's just bitchy.
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