This is awesome. Leo Burnett in Cairo put together this series of real-life-meets-pop-culture spots for client Melody Tunes, Egypt's first all-English music channel.
The effort goes in exact opposition to the hipster feel of iPod spots, which suggest your writhing rendition of the soundtrack in your head is actually sexier than it is. The parodies also touch lightly on cultural misunderstandings that occur when pop culture is imported.
This is something we can especially relate to, considering our mom thought "Hit Me Baby One More Time" was an anthem for masochists.
Onto the parodies: Smack That, Oops! I Did It Again, Candy Shop (50 Cent would be so proud), Don'tcha (we covered our eyes for this one), and Hang Up.
That zany little fat kid just cracks us up. He looks (and cries) like an Egyptian Cartman.
The college-bound doll at left is going for a steal at $19,995 on Marry Our Daughter, where families can safely sell stone-footed girls for a price soothing enough to eradicate in-law strife.
Harking back to arranged marriage in the Biblical sense, the site's a publicity stunt orchestrated by women who actually were sold into marriage. They hope to shed light on the mail order bride industry at large, and on loopholes across the nation that enable minors to marry, says Newsweek.
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- Calling AMC's Mad Men, Dr. Ernst Dichter's The Hidden Persuaders and current motivational research "mostly bullshit," George Parker manages to get himself into Advertising Age and promote his new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders which, if his past book, MadScam, is any indication, won't be bullshit at all.
- Magazines and newspapers aren't doing anything wrong. It's just that the ads inside them all suck.
- Hyundai's new campaign leaves behind the brand name hoping to leave behind associated cheapness.
- Has anyone else noticed how "bloggy" Advertising Age is getting and how it's now OK to "print" words like fuck and bullshit? We just thought we'd wonder publicly a bit about that.
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A few days ago we watched this (subtitled!) video for the Miss Teen America pageant, in which Miss South Carolina is asked (by a girl named Aimee Teegarden! Who finds these people and how do beauty pageants get so many of them?) why 1/5 of Americans can't locate the US on a map.
Her response was curious at best, but the point she made was that too few Americans have maps, and we also need to help South Africans and the people in the Iraq.
This on its own is probably not worthy of rantage, but this - inspired by Miss South Carolina's epiphany - kind of is.
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Following this, we wondered why this took so long. After all, it's a rule there has to be a Microsoft-related spoof for every Apple product released illustrating just how awful it might be if Microsoft actually tried to do anything Apple does. So here, courtesy of Adrants reader John Brock, we have zunePhone. Yes, a Zune that's also a phone. Predictably, it doesn't work so well. Of course the iPhone is far from perfect itself but Microsoft just lends itself to this sort of thing.
For shits and giggles, some time ago Harry Woods and Gill Witt put together this would-be ad for a less funded project of Frito Lay's - namely, Funyuns. (We used to eat them. They are completely unnatural and completely amazing.)
The result, Ahmadinejad Loves Funyuns!, is not really super-funny. In fact, it seems like something a little kid playing cut-and-paste-current-affairs would do. And it only gets less funny as it progresses. Maybe you just have to be high.
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For most people working closely with the internet, it's almost laughable to think somebody out there is still falling for schemes where a company is updating its databases and "needs" your username and password.
But apparently people still do. It happened to a friend and Adrants reader, whose Gmail account is now being used to send urgent messages demanding financial aid via wire transfer for her dire-straights "husband" in Nigeria. We were like, "What, she got married? And the guy's trapped in Africa? And he uses Western Union?!"
Thankfully there's help - like that promised by this banner ad, which claims it will check if your credit card has been compromised if you'll just tap your card number and expiry date into the boxes.
We're sure a couple hundred people fell for that one, too.
If you're going to run a UGC campaign, you're inevitably going to get some entries that just aren't after your best interest.
We thought this entry for Heinz was awesome, mainly because it poked fun at the whole UGC idea, and also because it reminded us of when we were kids and thought everything had "that secret ingredient" (or a "secret ingredient" pesticide) in it - from Cheetos to Mountain Dew.
KetchupFriends, which created the entry, actually put together a whole series of equally subversive oeuvres for Heinz. This one's creepy as hell but you get the idea.
We're wondering if the "friends" behind the ketchup are actually enlisted by the brand in some way. If so, that's a risky positioning move that maybe wants rewarding.
We'll keep mum about your dark side, Heinz. Don't worry.
Senior Editor Danial Lyons of Forbes has just been outed by a New York Times reporter as the Fake Steve Jobs that's got everybody frothing at the mouth.
Having crowned Bill Gates "the Beastmaster," Eric Schmidt "Squirrel Boy" and open source addicts "freetards" during his anonymous reign, Lyons hit everybody with his schoolyard candor - from major CEOs to tech journalists to forum geeks.
There doesn't appear to be a successor in line. Post-unmasking, Lyons wrote, "My plan at this time is to live forever and to remain in charge here, though perhaps with fewer restrictions on my power.
"The truth is, I am not human - I am a man-god, son of Zeus, born to a mortal woman but fathered by the ruler of the gods, lord of thunder."
We like this Danial Lyons.
After playfully rebuking the NYT reporter for robbing people of their "childlike wonder," he alluded that Fake Steve Jobs will live on as part of the Forbes.com family.
Released in early July, we apparently missed this video featuring Taryn Southern gushing about Hillary Clinton Obama Girl-style. Offering to be Hilary's Oval Office maid or White House aid, Southern sings, "let's seal the deal with a hug and a kiss and put a hot chick in the Oval Office. And bringing on the lesbian vibe, Southern continues, "I know you're not gay but I'm hoping for bi."
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