F'd Ad Fridays: Jello Green Grotto Salad

No, this is not an Urban Dictionary euphemism for an unspeakable sexual act. But perhaps it should be.

Via Sociological Images.

Postmodern beer advertising from Molson?

This is kind of hard to believe, but also quite remarkable.

After years of serving up ads that insinuiate that drinking their brand of beer will make you attractive to the opposite sex, Molson has decided to go meta.

The above ad, according to Sociological Images, appeared in Cosmopolitan. Just look at that sensitive, but ruggedly manly, dude with the adorable puppies and matching sweater and cap. A fine catch for any heterosexual woman! And look here! He's drinking a Molson!

While not very credible in its forced cuddliness, this ad probably went unnoticed between all the photoshopped boobs and bums that make up most of the ads in a women's mag.

But then someone caught wind of the other side of the campaign, that ran in FHM and Playboy:

Copy:

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF WOMEN.
PRE-PROGRAMMED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE. 

As you read this, women across America are reading something very different: an advertisement (fig. 1) scientifically formulated to enhance their perception of men who drink Molson. The ad shown below, currently running in Cosmopolitan magazine, is a perfectly tuned combination of words and images designed by trained professionals.  Women who are exposed to it experience a very positive feeling.  A feeling which they will later project directly onto you. Triggering the process is as simple as ordering a Molson Canadian (fig. 2).
…
Extravagent dinners.  Subtitled movies. Floral arrangements tied together with little pieces of hay. It gets old.  And it gets expensive, depleting funds that could go to a new set of of 20-inch rims. But thanks to the miracle of Twin Advertising Technology, you can achieve success without putting in any time or effort. So drop the bouquet and pick up a Molson Canadian…

Sociological Images editor Lisa Wade (a respected blogging ally, I should disclose) was offended by the ruse, writing "The second ad, then, portrays men as lazy, shallow jerks who are just trying to get laid (not soft and sensitive at all). And it portrays women as stupid and manipulable."

But I think Molson was on to something here. And it has to do with the nature of the trick.

There is no way any male reader of those magazines would take the "Male" ad seriously. It is a parody of the many "how to pick up girls" ads that have been gracing those kinds of publications since the '60s.

It also needs to be seen in context of the culture of pranking Millennials have grown up with. While some women might be offended by the goofy trick, others may get as much of a laugh out of it as the men.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Åsk, from Adland, tells me this campaign is old. Like, real old. (It's always good to know the internet's longest-running ad blogger!)

F'd Ad Fridays: Sexy teenage holocaust victim Halloween costume

I don't think you can sink much lower than this "Anne Skank"costume:

Lisa Wade writes in Sociological Images, "The Halloween revelers who made the choice to sexualize and laugh at this 15-year-old victim of the holocaust are graduate students in the Creative Writing program at Florida State University."

Man math

I'm not even going to bother with the Dr. Pepper 10 "is just for men" trope. It's a cynical and insulting PR move, and let's leave it at that.

But The Consumerist (bless their hearts) have found a much more original reason to hate the brand:

That's right — the brand is based on 10 calories per serving. But with a serving set at 8 fluid ounces (~237 ml), that would give a 20 ounce bottle something like 25 calories by Consumerist's math. The package, however, rounds down. Considerably.

But what do I know. Me man. Me no do math.

F'd Ad Fridays: Unintentionally fabulous vintage navy recruitment poster

This example is from a great post on Sociological Images, which points out, "Only after an active gay liberation movement made homosexuality more visible did people actually start to look for [the stereotypes] in people they knew."

Or did the ad artist play a big joke on all of us? After all, it is an ad asking men to go down for seamen...

Tide: For psycho moms with control issues

It's actually a very charming comercial. The question is, who is the hero here? The mom comes off as neurotic about her daughter's tomboyishness, while the daughter doesn't seem to care.

So, is the viewer mom supposed to empathize with uptight mom, or is she supposed to think to herself "Hey! If Tide satisfies that obviously OCD woman with its cleaning powers, I'm sure it'll do for me!"

Either way, I'll bet that girl is going to grow up cool.

In other news, Tide is a great way to get your girlfriend's head in your lap:



And to help your husband loosen up:



Is there anything it can't do?

Tip Via Sociological Images.

F'd Ad Fridays: Wake up and scream (nudity)

What a nightmare of a bedding ad:

 I mean, what are they...? How...? Why...?

And the copy is almost creepier.

Via Sociological Images

Meet the team who go the extra mile to make you feel special

I wasn't going to blog about the Cathay Pacific sex photo scandal. First of all, it's old news that has been well-covered by the major adblogs. Secondly, I'm trying to clean up my act on non-Friday posts. Just because it's about sex and advertising doesn't mean I have to blog about it, right?

Then I happened to check out the campaign site.

Oh, God. This thing has hours of unintentional (and highly puerile) comedy gold.

Let's start with the flash intro, which says "On the ground, in the air, behind the scenes and face-to-face, Cathay Pacific people always do their best to make you feel special."

"Providing Service Straight From the Heart" – this is what we offer to our passengers, and what our Flight Attendants proudly deliver. A Cathay Pacific Flight Attendant is a very special person: a trained safety officer, a caring team player and an ambassador for Hong Kong. It's definitely not a regular, "uniform" job. 

The "Meet the team" campaign has been remarkably successful for Cathay Pacific, particularly because it features attractive employees as symbols of the airline's famous customer service.

As Sociological Images pointed out, this approach was problematic in itself as it promoted passive feminine stereotypes. More on that later. We're here to have some fun.

The Meet the Team site features dozens of employee profiles, with pictures in uniform and out.

You click on whomever interests you, and get something like this:

Nancy's rather suggestive portrait aside, this one is pretty innocuous.

But check out some of the other employees' pull quotes in sexualized context:

It's the word "job" that's unfortunate here...

(Some other quotes, by the way, are not sexual in any way, but just plain bizarre:)

What?

What What?

A Cathay pacific spokesperson is quoted as saying, "The timing of this scandal really could not have been worse in marketing terms ... The scope for the slogan and the campaign to be misinterpreted, or ridiculed and lampooned, in light of the cockpit incident, is obvious."

Personally, I think they set themselves up for this fail. By making their whole campaign about attractive, playful and accommodating crew, once a couple of employees got the idea to join the mile high club, the joke wrote itself.