At the American Apparel XXXmas party

The staff at the LA factory and head office apparently got drunk, disrobed, and modelled some awful Christmas sweaters.

So, you know, it was a lot like an ad agency party.

Source: Facebook

"Boyfriend wanted" Facebook ad seems totally legit

It's for a speed dating site. I'm just always saddened that these ads target self-proclaimed married men.

(Then, of course, there's the copywriting...)

Now there's an Axe ad that gets straight to the point

If you can't laugh at yourself, you lose at life. I'm glad to see some of the Axe marketers doing something stupid and lighthearted.

Via the Portuguese Axe Facebook page. Thanks to Armando for sharing.

F'd Ad Fridays: Israeli insurer ensures racism outrage in America

This awful, awful Hebrew-language online infomercial for David Shield (דיוידשילד) insurance showed upin my Facebook feed for some unknown reason:



I have no idea why I watched it all. I guess I'm a masochist. And then I saw this scene, at 2:33:

Oh, L O effing L. Without proper insurance covering you while working in some God-forsaken country without public healthcare, you could end up in the hands of some kind of Native witch doctor.

Appalling. And shameful. Ignorant racism is still a worldwide phenomenon.

Campari's 2012 calendar leaves a bitter taste in my mouth

Ads of The World shared this photoshoot from Campari's 2012 "end of the world" calendar on Facebook. It shows Milla Jovovich in "12 surreal dresses representing some of the possible disasters that will end the world".

Oh, a tsunami dress! How tasteful. I'm sure Japan particularly likes this one.

And floods! Floods are always funny. Especially in Thailand.

This one will go over well in New Orleans.

And a volcano? Superstitious Italians really shouldn't go there.

Yeah, it's all a joke. (They have a 6-armed alien Jovovich in there, for god's sake.) But it seems in poor taste, considering how many of these armageddon situations have come true for so many people. Plus, the copy and shots are kind of tacky.

Facebook Commissioned Street Artist for Tape Art Installation in New York Office

Facebook's New York City offices just gained some bright hot colors courtesy Brooklyn artist Aakash Nihalani, who was commissioned to create a series of site-specific works for the social network's east coast headquarters.

Called "Domino," "Platforms" and "Zig Zag," these three installations would make anyone do a double-take!

Making an ass of yourself in social media

So, Chapstick had this kind of lame idea for a customer engagement campaign on Facebook. The advertised it in the real world like this:

Seems pretty harmless to me, just a poorly shot slice of life that was supposed to resonate with the female audience.

But that's not how one blogger, Melissa Spiers (guest posting on ReelGirl) took it. She flew into a very angry rant about the fetishization of the woman's bum and the possibility that we were supposed to imagine the Chapstick shoved up it.

Here's a sample:

"But why would anyone visit my online world, anyway?  Don’t we go online to experience an alternate reality? Chapstick! Woman’s Ass!  Have you ever gone through a day without being bombarded with any sexist messages or images?  Some of them are right out there, nothing subliminal about them  – see exhibits A through Z on the Rap Lyrics floor.  Lost. Chapstick. Ass. Others try to be subtle and sneaky (please take the audio tour in the Museum of Advertising).  Unfortunately, the use of women’s bodies to sell everything from beer to books has become so pervasive that we almost don’t see it anymore.  Hey, I bet I know where the Chapstick is!"

She is, of course, fully entitled to be angry at advertising (and other pop culture content) for continuing to treat woman as sex objects to promote sales or sexy brand associations. I just didn't see it here. I saw the portrayal as an attempt at humour by showing the model in an awkward and inelegant position — one that I often see (especially) women make self-deprecating comments about when they find themselves accidentally so positioned in public. It never occurred to me to think that the Chapstick was in her rectum. Why would I?

Now, Chapstick could have easily defended its intent (if I got it right) and agreed to disagree with its detractors who (it cannot be stressed enough) they invited to "be heard" at the campaign Facebook page.

But foolishly, they deleted all negative comments. So Reel Girl set up a protest FB page where they display screencaps of user comments before deletion.

From Jezebel:

A company deleting comments from its own Facebook page isn't censorship — Chapstick has no obligation to provide a public forum, and users are free to take their complaints elsewhere, as they have done. And in the grand scheme of things, the ad that started the whole controversy isn't that offensive. What Chapstick is guilty of is really bad PR. When Dr. Pepper issued a much more objectionable ad, at least they allowed customers to sound off about it on their Facebook page. By deleting negative comments, Chapstick is sending the message that they can't handle criticism. And especially if you're encouraging people to use social media to talk about your brand, that's a stupid message to send.

Seriously, seriously dumb. You lose at social media, whoever manages the Chapstick page.

UPDATE: Digging way down on the page, I found some un-deleted comments:

I wonder if this will stay:

Björn Borg's underwear tease

For the past couple of days, Björn Borg Underwear has been hinting at a new campaign on its Facebook page. This is the same brand that got in trouble with Facebook a while back for running a user-generated contest showing fans in (and out of) their underwear. Now, apparently, they're encouraging them to go commando:

Not really sure where they're going with this, but I'm sure it will get somebody's knickers in a twist.

Click to view animation (new window)

Not hers, though, apparently.

Don Draper can sell anything, even technology that would have destroyed him

This is a great ad for something many Facebook users aren't too keen on:



So nice to see Sal again. And the writing is great.

Yeah, it's a mashup. But when it brings us right back to Don/Dick's birth in 1928, the ad reminds us that Facebook does not in fact contain our whole lives. For those of us who are older, it is just a brief slice of history. And a selective one at that.

Plus, showing Don's real name, the circumstances of his birth, and his ex-wife all remind us of the privacy concerns brought up by this new feature. In the 1960s, Don's world could be destroyed by a box of photos. Today, the man would never even have had a chance.

Backstory here.

F'd Ad Fridays: Kopywriting Kourse teaches you to rite good

Saw this on my Facebook:

But today it's only 75% off. But even if it reaches 100% off, it's probably a bad deal. It takes you to an obvious spam site.

Dabitch from Adland also tells me that the image is stolen from here:

Bieberpocalypse shows epic failure of user-based moderation

I've written plenty about the idiocy of Facebook's policy of acting instantly on any complaint about inappropriate content, whether justified or not, and leaving the victimized user to prove they were wronged. It has been used by prudes to complain about non-sexual nudity, by political movements to ban social ad campaigns they disagree with, and who knows what else?

Well, YouTube has a similar policy of "yank first, ask questions later." And this policy was used today by a troublemaker called iLCreation who made an unsubstantiated copyright claim on every single Justin Beiber video on his official Vevo channel — leading to their wholesale removal — according to TMZ.



That's right. Even that awful video with over 600 million views got removed because an anonymous user made a claim against it. And boy, were his fans mad.

Relax, Beliebers. He's back online now.

But considering the unbelievable power that Facebook and YouTube have put into the hands of every single internet loser with a chip on his or her shoulder to stifle argument and destroy multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, maybe it's time to put smarter moderation in place?

I'm just saying.

Facebook: Born of nerds, killed by nerds?

Mashable reports that some (although not all) members of the headline-hungry hacker group "Anonymous" have declared that they will destroy Facebook on November 5:



This video, which looks like something from Robocop, cites users' total ignorance of privacy issues as the cause.

I guess we'll just have to see what happens...