Proving there's no such thing as meaningful self-regulation in any for-profit industry, food manufacturers, following their recently introduced guidelines for advertising food with too much sugar to kids, have simply played games serving sizes to limit per-serving sugar content to the agreed upon 12 grams thereby loopoling their way past the very junk food guidelines they created for themselves.
As an example, the U.S. Food Policy blog took a look at the nutrition labels for Cocoa Puffs and Trix and determined Cocoa Puffs, the cereal with more sugar than Trix based on the government's standard 30g serving size, will be able to advertise while Trix will not. This is possible courtesy of the foolish fuckery food manufacturers deploy when it comes to serving size. At a serving size of 27g and 12g of sugar, Cocoa Puffs meets guidelines while Trix, with a 32g serving size and 13g of sugar does not.
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We just can't get enough of this stuff! We love it when computers are left to do the work of humans because, well, computers are dumb and dumb nets dumb no matter how much the things try not to be dumb. Ah yes, our favorite whipping boy, contextual advertising, has risen his ugly head once again in a ad for Folger's coffee directly next to an article about hoe coffee could trigger the first heart attack in some people.
Oddly this story is dated August 15th so either there's some time travel going on here, this thing is a year old or it just came up in a Yahoo News search. No matter. It's still fun to witness idiocy in action.
After All You Need is Luvs, we can't say we're crazy about anything Saatchi at the moment.
But having seen this conspicuously similar pair of ads by MFI and IKEA, the Ad Police - an incognito force - did some following-up and found another pair of matched ads from the same two campaigns.
See IKEA's fighting couple, 2002, Crispin, Porter & Bogusky.
See MFI's fighting couple, 2007, M&C Saatchi.
Way to leave your lovemarks, guys.
It's a rare thing when marketers get pissed-off about the appropriation of meaningful symbols to sell stuff. Isn't that, like, what we do?
But the Beatles and the Vietnam war (particularly in the context of our current overseas "disagreement") are somewhat sensitive topics. So if you're going to use "All You Need is Love" to push diapers, expect to be swathed in shit.
See the first spot for All You Need is Luvs. We have to admit it's sort of cute.
In defense of its use of the Vietnam-inspired tune for a Luvs Deluxe campaign, Mark Rolland of Saatchi & Saatchi said, "The song itself was chosen to help create a stronger connection to the Luvs brand and awareness of its core benefit--leakage protection for less."
Stick to ripping IKEA ads, man.
There's nothing dirtier than a self-righteous agency that dips into unarguably unethical practices to nail, uh, unethical practices.
So with that completely objective introduction, we present you with Miivi.net. "Hey," you say. "That site doesn't exist." That's because it was taken down after a "D'oh!" by the MPAA, which realized, the hard way, that pirates - real pirates - stick together.
With help from an equally pompous agency called Media Defender, the MPAA launched fake movie torrent Miivi, which promised "fast and easy downloading all in one great site." The real purpose of the great site was to catch sinners in the act of sinning. There was even an app that simplified the downloading process.
Pirate Bay called shenanigans, leaking news of the gross deception to ZeroPaid. The site got pulled shortly thereafter.
Dumbasses.
AdPulp's David Burn points to anonymous ad blog Agency Tart on which the writer castrates his (or her) client for telling him permission should have been requested when he told the client Monday he'd be out of the office this Wednesday through Monday...but fully available via Blackberry. We all know some clients like to keep their agency folk on a tight leash but after laughing at the client thinking the whole thing was a joke, Agency Tart minced no words over being treated like a kid and wrote, "[the client] proceeded to tell me that he expects me to clear it in advance with him any time I plan to take off, as it might not 'coincide with the company's needs.' You gotta be kidding me. While I'm gone, I'll scour the souvenir shops looking for a device that will help him get his head out of his ass."
Clearing your vacation with your immediate supervisor, yes. Sharing your vacation plans with your client, yes. Being required to ask your client if you can take time off like a second grader asking his teacher to go to the bathroom...um, not so much.
With all the work it's done to court the "we are woman, hear us roar" demographic, we harbor serious doubts that this viral for Dove is the genuine article. Really, do they even sell deodorant cans like that anymore?
It certainly gets the point across (only amazing sensory deception could bring a sexual partner that, uh, close), but we'd be understating if we said the ad only made us a little sick. (And what's with that chick's teeth?) Then again, we really liked the idea of man omelet, so...
We're hoping the geniuses behind this Time Warner 1-800-OKcable commercial knew, in advance, they were creating something fully intended to be "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we know this is horrible but we're doing it anyway." We also hope the Tri-State band Future 86 was paid a whole lot of money for the privilege of never being taken seriously again.
Good nutrition? Healthy food? Bah. Who has time for those minor details when you're creating a commercial for Nestle Nesquik? OK, so the stuff now has 25 percent less sugar but awarding kids chocolate milk in response to their finicky dislike of vegetables, whole grain bread, fruit and fish is questionable at best. "It's OK Susie, you don't have to eat that awful, healthy stuff, Just have some Nestle's chocolate milk and by the time you're 13, that muffin top you'll be sporting will totally be in style."
We think the food police will be giving Nestle a call soon.
Um, yea right. This YouTube video of an Altoids transformer which claims to have been captured on the cell phone of a dude who visited his brother, employed at the special effects company for the movie Transformers, was clearly planted by the marketers behind the movie or the folks behind Altoids. While the video's description apologizes for the "bad quality," the quality is far from poor. In fact, the second half of the video displays vivid slo-mo action, something a cell phone just isn't capable of producing.
As usual, the person posting the video joined YouTube the day the video was posted. So lame. Yawn.
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