WONGDOODY, LA is on a pro-bono mission with the Venice Community Housing Corp to draw attention to the one in 32 homeless living in the area.
With flyers pushing "Dumpster Alcove w/ Fecal Matter 4 RENT" and ads like the one at left featuring in the for-lease sections of papers like The Argonaut and LA Weekly, the effort does two things:
- Highlights real "living options" that the homeless have to deal with
- Pokes fun at euphemisms realtors use to promote less-than-savory real estate (who could say no to "purvy lurkers" and "mysterious stains"? It's so Dickens)
Since the launch of the campaign, the VCHC reports double the number of calls and website visitors. We wonder how many of those calls were actual inquiries about renting in squalor. There's something so bohemian about demanding a challenging atmosphere.
This ad is part of an Australian road safety campaign that's become a big winner amongst citizens Down Under.
Instead of sharing cautionary tales about traumatic crashes, the message here is simple:
Men who speed have small dicks.
And to bring boisterous tire-burners down to size, the ad introduces a useful new gesture: nonplussed women and put-off buddies wiggling pinkies to illustrate speeders' "insecurities."
It's perfect.
more »
It's about time. Most every campaign that calls attention to breast cancer features some colored ribbon or some celebrity lamely attempting to soften you up so you'll make a donation. Why? Why? Why? It's boring. Why not offer women (the ones affected by this disease) what they really want; stunningly hot, six packed guys in near nude poses offering themselves up as fantasy fodder. It might even be enough to make that next chemo session pass a little quicker.
Well, that's what The McGratch Foundation's Naked for a Cause did for its 2008 calendar. It enlisted the help of 26 NRL and AFL Australian footballers to strip down and offer up their chiseled bodies for all to admire. Who can complain with that? We have our Double Standard-equipped saber to debate anyone who does.
This spot for raising STD awareness made us kind of sick, mainly because the guy in the chlamydia suit actually looks like somebody we dated. (It's amazing how unforgiving memory can be.)
Check out the STD Monster subsite to see more chlamydia behaving badly.
"Can I crash in your fallopian tube tonight?" God damn.
The spots were put together by the cats at SecretSauce.tv. There's also a contest where you can vote for your favourite chlamydia spot to win a free STD combo pack. (That's a series of tests for Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Syphilis, Hepatitis and HIV.)
The only thing we can think of that's cooler than a jam-pack of STD tests is a gift basket of microbe stuffed animals. Ebola never looked more cuddly, especially under the unattractive highlights of the chlamydia monster.
We always thought it was funny that Unilever would champion girls' self-esteem via Dove (courtesy of Ogilvy) and premit mass objectification of lusty ladies via Lynx/Axe (courtesy of Bartle Bogle Hegarty).
Boston's Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is less amused.
"The hypocrisy is Dove positioning itself as a brand that cares and is trying to teach girls to resist this messaging," said associate director Josh Golin. "At the same time Unilever, in the form of Axe, is putting out some of the worst messaging there is."
Our take? Unilever's just a parent company.
more »
Here's a music and video campaign called Not For Sale. The object of the game is to raise money to stop the global slave trade, which is a $32 billion industry, apparently.
We're very moved but, having come from a country whose favourite export is mail order brides and domestic helpers, we're feeling a little nonplussed.
For each girl that's bought out of slavery, another handful leaps in, encouraged by angling parents and crappy governments (which, instead of using its money for roads or transport, may fund stupid shit like Imelda Marcos' shoe fetish, a social tragedy romanticized by fashionistas worldwide).
In the end, trying to end slavery is about persuading corrupt governments to stop swilling their countries and make more productive decisions. But that'll probably happen around the same time Bush stops throwing America's dollar value at the War on Terror.
This is really, really, REALLY bad. We'll say it again, REALLY bad. If you're going to go and spoof the Budweiser Wassup commercial, the least you could do is put a little effort into it. Apparently, Greenpeace, who claims Anheuser-Busch uses genetically altered rice to make Budweiser, thinks shitty dialog and bad actors can somehow call attention to the horror that is genetically enhanced rice. At least use phones made this century?? This critique is, of course, irrelevant because Greenpeace is getting the publicity they want anyway.
We hold a special place in our hearts for little girls carrying cupcakes because of an ad for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that we used to see all the time when we were kids.
To this day, it still makes us hungry for multiple halves of love-smattered confections.
Along the same altruistic vein (except without the whole changing-religions part), Merkle launched an interactive bakery called Cupcakes for a Cause to raise money for Cancercare. Every virtual cupcake sold means $1 toward research for a cure.
But talking of cupcakes would be lame if you couldn't actually eat one. The campaign also involves bake sales with sponsoring homes and bakeries. Oh heaven.
This is part of Greenpeace's ongoing attempt to get Kleenex to stop using ancient trees to make its products. It's pretty much the same deal as what happened here -- indeed, they're interrupting the exact same "Let it Out" campaign -- but this time everybody's in Wrigley Fields and there's lots of bear puns (Chicago is home of the Cubs).
There's an adaptation of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at the end of the video, except the lyrics have been changed to champion the cause of bears and trees.
Clever the first time. The second time around? ...eh.
One thing we can say about French AIDS PSAs: they're compelling and almost always raunchy, even if they don't always take on a playful persona.
Leo Burnett, Paris just put together Sidaction, which pairs the heat of the moment with a crucial truth about sex in an AIDS-slammed environment.
Beyond an orgy of writhing bodies, the spot's end leads to jarring -- but not pushy -- imagery. We hate to ruin the surprise, but you'll never look at the hourglass scene in Disney's Aladdin the same way again.
It's great work. Now if only we could stop thinking about Vaseline.
|
