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

Sleeveface meets augmented reality

Another Sleeveface sighting! And this one uses classic album covers to augment reality old-school.

Pretty cool.

I would have preferred to see Country Life, though...

There are way too many of these ads, by Leg Paris.

But I imagine it was hard for the creative team to stop, once they got started:

Via I Believe in Advertising

Sleeveface: the greatest photo meme lives on in radio station ads

Long before today's trend of stupid photo memes, there was Sleeveface. Although earlier examples exist, the fad was named and made famous in 2007 by proud Welshman Carl Morris.

Following the success of his user-generated site, in 2008 Morris and his friend John Rostron published a book of Sleeveface pictures. Having fallen in love with the concept from the start, a bunch of us at Acart Communications had submitted our own, photographed by our colleague Rob Wilson. Most of them made it into the book.

So sliiiiide over here, and give me a moment...

I've always wanted to find a way to use Sleeveface in a campaign. So I was a little bummed out when I passed this billboard in Ottawa last week:

It's a little obvious to do it for a classic rock station, but I guess I'm glad that the meme lives on.

Close-ups below:

Jammin' in the cubicle

Sisters are doin' it for themselves?

From Drive-Time to Human Trafficking - Canadian Edition

Hey, look! A radio station is offering guys in an affluent Commonwealth country the chance to "win" a beautiful Slavic mail-order bride!

The Bear, "Edmonton's Best Rock", is working with a mail-order bride company in Russia to "give away" a hot and compliant hooker sex slave wife:

"But we're not going to give this opportunity to just anybody.... to weed out the no-hopers and time-wasters, we've developed the application form below. If you're interested in potential holy matrimony with a hot foreign chick, fill it out to the best of your abilities. If we pick you, you'll be heading to Russia with 13 nights' accomodation[ sic], return air fare, and $500 spending money to meet the lucky lady!"

Here are some of the entries of would-be winners:

"A perfect wife is one who are not like women from Canada and USA, because women from these countries are too spoiled, always want their way and will take everything from a man if they are not happy and leave the man."
- Michael Okeymaw from Hobbema

"Tired of goddamn vacant entitled Alberta princesses"
- Damian from Edmonton

 

"MY PENIS IS LONGER THAN MY ARM"

- SHANE from DRAYTON 

Wow... does this disgusting and dehumanizing publicity stunt ever seem familiar...

That was last March, when a New Zealand station ran the same contest, but with a Ukrainian "bride" as the prize.

In that case, not only did NZ get bad press all over the western world, but attracted the topless ire pf Ukrainian women's protest group FEMEN, whose main objective is to stamp out human trafficking. They jokingly threatened the winner, known only as Greg, with castration if he came to Kiev to claim his human prize. They had this posted slapped all over Auckland:

OUCH!

Greg apparently turned down the free trip to Kiev.

When the FEMEN women were protesting the contest, they used terms like "wildman" to denigrate the stranger from a strange land.

And they were right. In Eastern Europe, "matchmaking" services often serve as cover for sex tourism. But the barbarians in Auckland—and now Edmonton—do women around the world even more of a disservice by treating the foreign women as sexually objectified and obedient "perfect wives".

This kind of thing should not be happening here. This is Canada. And I am ashamed to have a story like this make the international news. (I read about it in Jezebel.)

Fortunately, I'm not alone. Alberta’s Employment and Immigration minister, Thomas Lukaszu, pulled all of his ministry's advertising from The Bear 100.3 FM Tuesday in protest.