F'd Ad Fridays: Stalking the friendly skies with KLM

Image via Skyscanner

Last winter, Skyscanner reported on the popularity of “flyrting” — flirting with strangers onboard commercial flights — with a survey saying that 45% of respondents admitted to doing it.

Now, according to AdFreak, KLM is planning to launch a socially-enabled booking service service that will let solo travellers choose their seat mate by creeping that person in advance on Twitter or Facebook.

What could possibly go wrong?

Bloglove is in the air... #saveadland

When I started this blog, in early 2009, I decided I had better carefully study the style and success of some of the more popular ad bloggers. Quickly, I realized that there was a small group who I ended up reading most often: AdFreak, Copyranter, Adrants, Adland, Osocio and (of course) Ads of The World - the place everyone goes for content.

As I found my voice and my niche, I also found that these blogs were run by a close-knit fraternity of ad nerds who were completely modest and approachable. Tim Nudd of AdFreak is an Anglo-American family man who balances being edgy and fun with the demands of representing a corporate brand. Steve Hall of Adrants is an apparent ad convention junkie who also writes for Playboy's "I just visit it for the articles" blog. Åsk Wäppling of Adland is a Swedish design nerd and single mom who is the veteran of the group (having blogged since 1996). Marc van Gurp of Osocio is a Dutch family man and digital designer who has a passion for great work that inspires social change. Ivan Raszl of Ads of The World is a Hungarian family man, designer, and now New Canadian. Even the anonymous Copyranter, the cynical Rorschach of the group, is surprisingly humble and accessible and on his comments thread.

It has been a pleasure to find myself accepted into this group, even though I'm a noob and don't have a massive following. All of the above have shared content from this blog, from time to time,  and have respectfully linked back. Tim and I chat frequently on Google. Steve runs a Facebook club, of sorts, for fellow enthusiasts. I flirt shamelessly with Åsk on Facebook. Marc and I are now good friends (although we've never met in person) and collaborators on Osocio. Ivan and I just recently had a meet-up at a pub when I was doing focus groups in his new home base. And Copyranter, he occasionally gives me a nice shout-out.

But the real sense of community occurred to me just today, when Åsk found herself at the business end of an unpayable server bill. She put out an appeal, and... well... I'll let her tell it:

"We've raised $1,287.15 for the $2,658.50 so far, but that's not even the best news here. The best news is that so many of you care enough to retweet and donate and post blog posts and tell your friends. I honestly wasn't expecting this much love, and I am humbled by it.

@Adfreak asked everyone to please help save us, @agencyspy put a link in their tuesday morning stir to longtime adgrunt Purplesimon's appeal post. I didn't ask @purplesime to do that, and I didn't ask @imperica to post this appeal post either. I'm grateful they both did. 

Turns out that Imperica have a good grasp of how much I do here (read: everything), and some readers revealed they had no idea. Thus came the tweets showing me building hardware (acme, apex and acme again) which was quite fun for a bit. At least for me. :)
Even the End days of advertising joined in making a special sarcastic toon just for adland. Sweet. 

And to top it all off, my ex-ex hosting place Memset contacted me over twitter to see if they can help. They must have forgiven me for almost taking down their network a few superbowls ago. 

And today, Amazon in Ireland phoned us up, they've not just extended the deadline, they're going to help figure out how to make a better setup that won't cost a fortune each month."

It's a Festivus miracle!

So I'd like to do my part to give back some blog love as I entreat those of you who also love reading or writing adblogs to donate now to keep the lights on at Adland. (I hear those Swedish winters are really damn dark, too!)

And thanks to all my adblogging friends for teaching me the ropes.

F'd Ad Fridays: What to do if Santa comes too soon

AdFreak posted this ad promoting the morning after pill as a seasonal thing. Seems a little not-so-jolly to me, making emergency contraception festive.

And BPAS, "the UK's leading abortion specialist", wants women to get their oops pills in advance just in case they have unsafe sex over the holidays.

It's a little weird. They do give the disclaimer, "The ‘morning after pill‘ should only be considered an emergency form of contraception, other, more effective forms of contraception are available" but it still feels like they're completely ignoring the whole STI issue.

F'd Ad Fridays: This is NOT a new euphemism for "vagina"

But it probably should be.

Hmmm... it's not as snug as I had hoped.

This is an actual product.




It's a novelty one, obviously, but you can buy them online.

Complete with dick jokes.

Via AdFreak

"Degrading" Lynx ads banned in UK

According to Adfreak, a series of online ads for Lynx (Axe) deodorant have been banned by the UK's ad authority for implying that "using the advertised product would lead to more uninhibited sexual behaviour" and concluded, "we therefore considered that the poster would be seen to make a link between purchasing the product and sex with women and in so doing would be seen to objectify women."

While I find the ads juvenile and tasteless, I'm not sure I buy the ASA definition of how women are objectified in the ads. For example, in the ad above there is no doubt in my mind that the model, Lucy Pinder, is being sexually objectified. But I don't think it's Lynx's laughable claim that it will get you laid by ladmag models that does it. It's the way the model presents her T&A to the camera with a porno stare, with the joke about premature ejaculation. (Which I find pretty funny, given the youthful target market.)

I'm sure anti-rape groups will also be outraged at the implication that it's okay for a man to "lose control" when he sees a woman sexualized like this. But in context of the other ads in the campaign, the pun is made more clear:

I just find the ads irresponsible and degrading to their young male masturbathlete target market as they are to the model (who is at least getting paid). But I still think banning them is the wrong idea. Better to just expose this crap for what it is — lazy, sexist advertising.

William Shatner serves fried turkey with ham

In the decades since leaving Montreal for Hollywood, the Shat has traded in his smoked meat for southern fried turkey. (As well as an October Thanksgiving for a November one.)

And State Farm has hired him as the spokesman for a PSA to prevent turkey frying fires:



It's long, but it's worth it to get every morsel of Shat's signature over-the-top delivery.

Via Adfreak

How not to handle agency self-promo #sapientnitro

Copyranter unearthed this example of what he called "the absolute worst ad agency self-promo ever" from Sapient Nitro. And thus the feeding frenzy began. And deservedly so, because if there's one thing ad people hate, it's other ad people without a healthy dose of ironic industry self-loathing.



Have you stopped fidgeting uncomfortably yet? It gets better.

AdFreak just reported that the agency started deleting mocking Facebook posts from their wall, and even banned a few users. This prompted one Twitterer to say,

Oh, dear lord.

I kind of felt sorry for them for the video, which showed a painful lack of cynical self-awareness. But the Facebook failure I have no sympathy for.

If you screw up in social media, you screw up in public. You own it. You laugh about it. (Or apologize gracefully) And you move on.

Otherwise...

John St. to dominate the ad medium of cat videos in 2012

Love it. I guess someone there saw this chart:

Or this:

Or:

Tip via AdFreak

F'd Ad Fridays: Turkeydogs against American Thanksgiving

The obvious answer is "because I'm not emotionally invested in a turkey I've never met and besides those freaky things look like some kind of mutant dinosaur that would eat me given half the chance."

Luckily, my Thanksgiving was last month so we slipped under the PETA radar.

Via AdFreak

Texas gun school spot may be the year's most idiotic ad

Everything's bigger in Texas. Even the assholes.

“If you are a socialist liberal and/or voted for the current campaigner-in-chief, please do not take this class,” Mr. Keller said in the ad. “You’ve already proven that you cannot make a knowledgeable and prudent decision as required under the law. Also, if you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you the class. Once again, with no shame, I am Crockett Keller.”

For some people, this kind of hate speech would be the kiss of death. But to this Texas gun instructor, it's just common sense:

“Why would I teach people who have sworn the annihilation of the United States and who can lie, cheat, steal and murder Americans in order to further Islam?” Mr. Keller said. “Why would I arm someone like that? Why would I enable them to carry a weapon legally? I don’t want to be a part of that. I’m sorry those flight instructors didn’t have the same hindsight to know that these guys were up to no good, and they shouldn’t be teaching them, and they should have refused.”

Where's his head? I think it's up under his gun...

The Texas Department of Public Safety is investigating if this warrants him losing his licence due to breaking anti-discrimination statutes.


Via AdFreak and the New York Times

"We interrupt this ad for a message from our sponsors"

I was reading this AdFreak post about the perennial return of McDonald's McRib sandwich, then I clicked on the Flash video embed for the latest McRib TV ad:



Yeah, I know. Crappy ad.

But the first time I clicked it, I had to sit through a pre-roll ad from Google... to watch the ad I came for.

What. The. Hell?

Let me know if it happened for you.

BTW, if you like the McRib as an ironic brand, but don't want to actually ingest one, try on this McRib t-shirt. All proceeds go to Ronald McDonald House.

F'd Ad Fridays: Free set of knives with Amanda Knox issue!

In Italy, where open air magazine stands are still on every other corner, the competitive market leads publishers to continually try to top each other with novelty giveaways. Often it's a CD or DVD.

But as AdFreak reports, the issue of gossip mag Oggi with Amanda Knox on the cover features a set of knives (and inexplicably, a pizza cutter):

Knox spent four years in an Italian prison after being convicted of killing her roommate with a black-handled kitchen knife. She was just recently released after much legal wrangling, but The Daily Mail says that Oggi continued to imply she was guilty and that prosecutors had flubbed the case.

Via The Telegraph

One thing is for sure: Oggi is guilty of insulting the memory — and the family and friends — of a young murder victim.

Awkward Grandma does the "Schweddy Balls" bit

Adfreak featured this new Canadian campaign (also featured on CBC) for Crosby's Molasses that was clearly inspired by the SNL "Schweddy Balls" skit with Alec Baldwin.



This time, though, the writing is a little more hamfisted and the delivery depends on people being made uncomfortable hearing an elderly lady make accidental sexual innuendoes.



What the 'Freaks may have missed, however, is that watching nice old ladies deliberately and explicitly talk about sex is completely normal in this country. At least it used to be:

F'd Ad Fridays: Organic dairy boy band is no joke

And that, in itself, is ridiculous. Despite transplanting all the well-worn 'N Sync et cetera audio and video clichés to a farm setting, this campaign for Yeo Valley organic dairy never actually manages to be funny. Even the moo and the "Got Milk?" moustache shot seem genuine and earnest.



Meanwhile, AdFreak notes that this mad-up group, "Churned", will appear on Britain's The X Factor talent show and will have this song available on iTunes.

Is this some kind of super-subtle new British humour I'm not aware of?

"Aggressive Ho" and other porn parodies of your least favourite ads

For years, I've been saying that the inevitable conclusion of increasingly supersexualized ads is that they'll soon drop all pretenses and go directly to the hardcore porn approach.

PETA has already validated this on the sexy advertiser side with their plan to launch a porn site featuring nude vegans gone wild.

Now, according to AdFreak, Hustler is meeting PETA in the middle with a porn movie about advertising, "America's Favorite Commercials Gone Porn".

Here's one (censored for YouTube) that makes fun of Flo from Progressive Insurance:



You can check out the rest (including the obvious "Five-Dollar Footlong" bit) at AdFreak.

F'd Ad Fridays: Today's PETA outrage

The guy in the centre of this picture is CJ Wickersham, a recreational spear fisher who wound up in the news (and in hospital) after a bull shark attacked and almost bit off his leg. Even though it was a truamatic wound, requiring had to get about 800 stitches, he said he has no hard feelings against the shark.

Wickersham is luckier than Michael Cohen, a Canadian who has lost his leg and is fighting for his life after a great white attack in South Africa.

Shark attacks do happen. They are, however, rare and any conservationist will tell you that we are a far greater threat to their species (through unsustainable fishing and horrific "finning" to serve the shark fin soup market) than they are to ours.

Nonetheless, there is absolutely no call for this:

According to AdFreak, PETA is fruitlessly attempting  to get this billboard posted in the vicinity of where the Wickersham attack took place.

Yes, this kind of asshattery gets them in the news. But it is also what polarizes people like me, who are empathetic towards animal welfare, against them. The jerks.

Toledo billboards wage holy war over whether God makes people gay

First there was this one, by an affirming church in Toledo:

Via The Advocate

Nice, isn't it? A very Christian message of inclusivity and unconditional love. But it didn't sit well with the entire Christian community in Toledo, particularly with Rev. Tony Scott of the Church on Strayer. He was moved by some unknown force to respond with another billboard:

Via AdFreak

Rev. Scott has some very strong feelings about Biblical orthodoxy. He told the Toledo Blade:

"I love everyone. There's nothing on that billboard about hate. I'm getting hate mail from lesbian and gay people, but my point is that I love them too much to let someone believe a lie. I love this city too much to let a lie be sown." [...] "What the gay organizations have done is they have misused the biblical passages, according to the experts."

He then gives his own interpretation of the Genesis creation myth:

"God's definition of marriage is that he plumbed [Adam] and he plumbed [Eve] so that the two of them could procreate. Anything relationally between the sexes that does not have that potential, and that opportunity, does not come from God."

But thge real question is, "What Would Jesus Do?"

Thanks to AdFreak for the tip.

What would happen if Boris Vallejo directed a hamburger ad?

If the the master of over-the-top fantasy illustration were asked to direct a Carl's Jr. ad, it would have some beefy guy in Greco-Roman bondage gear, standing on a mountaintop...

...wielding magical powers...

It would have busty women lolling around in improbable bikini armour...

 It would have mythical beasts...

 It would have even more gratuitous T&A...

And it would look like this:



Alas! Boris did not do this. But it is his kind of epic.

Ad by David and Goliath

Tip via AdFreak

Netflix presents: How to fail at social media branding

Image via Gizmodo

Meet Jason Castillo. Thanks to Netflix's failure to secure the Twitter name for Netflix's new spinoff mail-order DVD business, he is now the unintentional brand ambassador for Qwikster:

(The profile picture is a recent change. Until yesterday it was an illustration of Sesame Street's Elmos smoking a massive joint, but Castillo got scared that the media attention would lead to a bust.)

Those of us charged with making up odd names for new brands that are both "intuitive" and twisted enough to be "ownable" generally go through a checklist of diligence before even getting trademark lawyers involved. We Google, check all top-level domains, and search all the major social media channels (Facebook and Twitter primarily) to make sure someone hasn't already claimed it. This oversight, for a brand as big as Netflix, is actually pretty astounding.

So astounding, as AdFreak's David Kiefaber quips, it is " so dumb that I'd think it was staged if there were anything for the company to gain from it."

Is it possible? I doubt it. Considering the many gaffes that Netflix has committed recently, it's not stretching credibility to think that they simple dropped the ball. And while this kind of situation is usually dealt with by a quiet negotiation and modest cheque, Castillo is so gloriously stoned that he continues to play his hopes for making "bank" on this as the slow-motion trainwreck only social media can provide.

Meanwhile, Business Insider points out that Twitter's TOS expressly forbid the selling of Twitter names. So by being so publicly greedy, Castillo could blow the whole deal.

And Netflix? Everyone hates the split anyway. It may be time to cut bait and run in a different marketing direction.

F'd Ad Fridays: Virgin Mobile's flash of insanity

AdFreak says this ad was banned is S. Africa for appearing to sexualize young girls because even though the actresses were over 20, they were acting childish:



I just think it's a bizarre ad that a Creative Director dreamed up after licking a toad at a Kwaito concert.