The most confusing thing I have seen all week

Fortunately, it's only Monday morning.

It's an ambient idea from CP+B Canada, for Tourism Toronto. But what is it?

According to the submission on Ads of The World:

"In order to curate the vacation photos Toronto visitors take and put online, we unleashed 21, 8-foot snowmen designed by top contemporary artists and placed strategically at key tourist spots in the city. When you take a photo with the snowmen, a famous Toronto scene is featured as the backdrop. And to encourage the photos would be shared, Tourism Toronto is donating $2 to Starlight Children’s Foundation for every snowman photo uploaded to the campaign’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/visittoronto, up to $50,000. And, we’ve integrated each photo takers’ network, by offering another $1 for every ‘Like’ each photo generates, further expanding this campaign’s reach. To date, more than $24,000 has been raised."

I would like to point out that this submission comes from a country in which English is frequently spoken. "In order to curate"? Okay, that's just shitty jargon. But the rest of the write-up is similarly convoluted.

They set up giant snowmen in popular Toronto tourism photo op sites, then provided a fundraising incentive to share them on Tourism Toronto's Facebook page and get their friends involved. Was that so hard to say?

I am amazed that such a famous agency brand would leave the adblog PR to someone who don't write good.

But the most confusing thing about it all is this:

Why does the snow"man" have a vulva?

Perfume pill lets women sweat (sorry, "perspire") designer scent

My agency colleague (and part-time fashion blogger) Amanda sent me this "ad" for Lucy McRae Swallowable Parfum:



The McRae blog says,

"Swallowable Parfum is a digestible scented capsule that emits a unique odor through your own perspiration. Excreted through the skin's surface the body becomes an atomizer; a biologically enhanced second skin synthesized directly from the natural processes of the body.
Swallowable Parfum is a provocative campaign developed alongside synthetic biologist Sheref Mansy initialised to open discussion with the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, fashion and technology industries."

So, is this a product or is it art?

McRae describes herself as:

"...an Australian artist straddling the worlds of fashion, technology and the body. As a body Architect she invents and builds structures on the skin that re-shape the human silhouette. Her provocative and often grotesquely beautiful imagery suggests a new breed; a future human archetype existing in an alternate world
Trained as a classical ballerina and architect her work inherently fascinates with the human body. The media call her inventor, friends call her a trailblazer. Either way, she relies on instinct to evolve an extraordinary visual path that is powerful, primal and uniquely Lucy McRae."

From the press release in the Swallowable Perfume site:

"Amid growing rhetoric around the body as the new frontier for technological advancement,
Swallowable parfum by internationally celebrated body architect Lucy McRae, is a digestible
scented capsule that breaks entirely new ground in the science of human instinct.
Once absorbed, the capsule enables the skin to become a platform, an atomizer; A biologically enhanced second skin synthesized directly from the natural processes of the body. Fragrance molecules are excreted through the skins surface during perspiration, leaving tiny droplets on the skin that emanate a unique odor. The potency of scent is determined by each individual’s acclimatization to temperature, stress, exercise, or sexual arousal. 

Swallowable Parfum is a capsule that enables human skin to emit a genetically unique scent
about who we are, and how we perform our identities. A provocative campaign initialised to open discussion with the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, fashion and technology industries, challenges the way we consume parfum in the future. After working for four years as a body architect at Philips Design in a far future research program exploring emotional sensing and part of a team who claims our bodies are a platform for technology, this cosmetic capsule is part of an on going exploration that re-defines the role of skin. 

Lucy McRae teams up with acclaimed synthetic biologist Sheref Mansy and are currently
in research phase to develop a capsule that consists of synthesied fragrant lipid molecules
that mimic the structure of normal fat molecules naturally found in the body. The human body has enzymes that metabolise fat in a series of steps that free lipids and lipid-like molecules from their scaffolds. Swallowable Parfum takes advantage of these natural enzymes found in our bodies to release fragrant molecules from larger structures. Subsequently, the liberated fragrant molecules are excreted through the skin’s surface during perspiration."

Again, product or art? I guess it's up to just what you're willing to swallow.

F'd Ad Fridays: Disembodied people parts as iPhone cases

Yesterday, AdFreak posted this severed hand iPhone case:

Then I followed links to find this asinine one:

Which reminded me of this one, which was posted on Buzzfeed last month:

Isn't it just "booty call" with butt pimples?

And then things just got weird...



Man... what is wrong with iPhone users? I just let mine go naked.