F'd Ad Fridays: Norte Photoblocker keeps you safe from being busted on Facebook

A recent study determined that British Facebook users are visibly intoxicated in 76% of the photos they get tagged in on the social network.

This campaign, from Argentina's Norte beer, promotes an individual beer cooler that senses when a smartphone picture is being taken of you and sends a counterflash to destroy the shot with glare.



It's a photo jamming tactic that has been popular with people who want to evade photo radar speed traps. So it is theoretically possible, even if this "innovation" is a gag.

Here's another ad:



Via Ads of The World

Testicular Breakdancing

Marc shared this funny little dance number he saw on Adverbox.



It's an independent effort from writer/director Mark Pallis. The dancers are Dan Burns and Shay Lee.

There's only one problem, and that's the "Mo" theme. Movember has a focus on prostate cancer, while the dancers are demonstrating self-screening for testicular cancer. (Although the UK group includes other male-specific cancers.)

Oh well, I guess we should be happy that the breakdancers aren't checking their prostates. That would be much more awkward.

Monday morning Danish comes with a cup of sexual objectification

Helloooo, target market!

This softcore pornvertising video for Denmark's JBS underwear brand manages to insult men and women at the same time, by limiting (t)its appeal to adolescent boys. Whatever.



Via Illegal Advertising

F'd Ad Fridays: Real ad spoofs parodies

With so many commercial spoofs going viral, is it any surprise that real advertisers are wrapping their ads in faux parody?

Here's a prime example:



Blade Buddy is a real product, apparently direct marketed. And this is just an attempt to break out of infomercial hell? Will it work? Your call.


Via Buzzfeed

Cheech & Chong's Next Next Movie

Great to see them working together again. There's a nice surprise at the end of the... umm... trailer.



Sweet.

Via Illegal Advertising

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.

Axe turns a single sexual pun into more than a minute of online ad

Because Canadian history and identity are so entwined with the humble little Castor canadensis, we're pretty used to these kinds of jokes. So, while this ad is somewhat funny at first, it could easily have been written by any hoser in Grade 9.



And here's my mental narrative:

Ha! "Beaver"! Oh, that history lesson is so awkwardly sexual when read over the sexy video. Oh, that was a good one! ... Okay, end now. ... Is that still going?

I guess that's why it has had <5K views in three months.

F'd Ad Fridays: the worst attempt at viral marketing I have seen this week

Buzzfeed lists are one of the laziest ways to generate content. You just come up with some kind of observational humour angle, then compile a bunch of photos and captions. Most of them suck. So I don't even know why I clicked on something as unpromising as:

Notice who/what the submitter is? I didn't. I guess I was tired. And bored. So much so that I endured several of these lame and obvious dichotomies hoping for something surprising.

Then I got to the kicker. If it can be called that. It was actually the most hamfisted transition to a sales pitch ever:

Are students much stupider than they used to be? In my day, this kind of craptacular attempt at stealth marketing would have led to backlash against the brand. And we didn't even have social media; we actually had to write editorials in the student newspaper to register our disgust. (And they called us "slackers" back then.)

Now, all it gets is this:

All I could think about, reading this, was that someone let a summer intern run with his or her "OMFG, this is totally going viral!" idea without really giving a shit.

Meh..