Our insightful friends over at Something Awful have decided to take on several recent, feel good, politically correct Ad Council campaigns and turn them upside down. Revel in advice on how to beat your child. Learn how to properly drive drunk. Realize penis enlargement pills might be great for the guy but all they do for the girl is hurt. With the tagline, "Good enough for Dingos, good enough for you," we're told babies are "Cute. Cuddly. Delicious." Diversity is all well and good but redheads are hot. And pollution? No one cares.
Among all the iPod spoofs circulating, this one's fairly humorous poking fun at the ever increasing size of the unit and the endless proliferation of accessories made for it. The spoof promotes the iPod Flea, an MP3 player so small it can play just one song over and over for an hour.
On Monday, a billboard on Sepulveda Boulevard, south of Santa Monica, CA went up that included an image of a shadowy Uncle Sam figure controlling a newscaster puppet. The accompanying headline reads, "Shox News Channel: We Distort, You Comply." The billboard, created by political artist Karen Fiorito, is said to parody monopolistic corporate media and is the second billboard created by the outspoken Fiorito who says her work is designed to explore the relationship between politics, propaganda and art.
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While we passed this off as just another method to promote his book, Life After the 30-Second Spot, we have to admit this video, created by Joe Jaffe, about the television upfront is insightful and humorous pointing out the absurdity of the entire sell/buy dance agency buyers and networks sales rep perform each year. Give it a look. Have a laugh. Then get back to all those upfront meetings and parties you have scheduled this week.
I'm Not Old. Really!
Late last year, Euro RSCG London created a :30 for French car maker Citroen which turned the new Citroen C4 into a dancing robot complete with choreography from Justin Timberlake's choreographer Marty Kudelka and music from the Les Rythmes Digitales song Jacques Your Body. Now, as with all great ads, the dancing Citroen spot has been spoofed.
Alex Mallison of X-bam illustration spent two weeks working hard to recreate the Citroen spot but with an interesting and very humorous twist. View the original here and the Mallison version here.
U.K. prankster ASABAILEY has set up a mock charity group designed to support traditional agency folks who have been laid off. The site, TwatsLondon, appears to be a spoof of another job charity site, the seemingly legit NABS. We're too jet-lagged from AD:TECH to actually research this for you.
PUMA had one. Why not Mastercard? In a spoof of an old ad campaign called Indecent Proposal, we have a young man walking his date to the door in that cutesy and romantically awkward way when out of the blue comes, "So, how 'bout a blow job?"
Watch it here.
So here they are. At first, these ads were thought to be real. To have run in Maxim magazine in Brazil (see below). Then, it was thought to be a viral stunt by PUMA itself. Then, it became known that PUMA had nothing to do with them and that they were just created by someone to have some fun. They are, in fact, fake ads.
Never knew sneakers could be so exciting.
A little chronology:
(1/8/06: A lot of these links are broken because they are external and it's been almost three years since the story originally broke. Sorry.)
1. According to "dabitch" from Adland in my comment section below, the ads are running in Maxim in Brazil. More on that here. (This is now not true)
2. Puma contacts Salon where the ads appeared on reverse cowgirls weblog asking that the ads be taken down.
3. PUMA makes this statement after catching wind of the whole thing:
"It has been brought to our attention that several unauthorized, sexually suggestive advertisements portraying the PUMA brand have been released over the Internet. We are appalled that images like these would be created and distributed under the PUMA name. As a brand, we seek to take a unique perspective toward our advertising in an effort to challenge the boundaries of our industry; however we would never consider using these tactics. We are in the process of researching the circumstances and reserve any legal steps available."
4. They are, in fact, fake as stated in this press statement from PUMA. [via Gawker via Yahoo via WSJ]
5. PUMA sends out Cease and Desist letters to many bloggers.
6. I respond to the Cease and Desist.
7. Gawker responds to the Cease and Desist.
8. A nice summary of the whole thing from Felix Salmon.
9. Gawker offers to organize legal defense for anyone served with cease and desist letters.
[via Reverse Cowgirl via YayHooray!]
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