Copyranter gives it a hand:
Vancouver’s Science World continues with the best museum ad effort currently running, this time promoting their new exhibition, “The Science of Sexuality.” The “Ejaculation” execution is the best: simple, smart advertising.
A cute campaign to get people to treat stray dogs more humanely:
It was shot in Santiago, Chile:
Created by Violeta Caro Pinda and Felipe Carrasco Guzmán, the dog-centric video follows volunteers as they tie balloons onto strays in the capital city’s La Cisterna area. Each balloon contains phrases (in Spanish), such as “Do not mistreat me,” “Scratch my neck” and “Give me love.”
Walter White channels Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”:
The text:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
A reader responds to this week’s post on TV anti-heroes:
It’s just over a week until Breaking Bad starts up again and we get to see how Hank Schrader, the DEA agent and Walter’s brother-in-law, proceeds after he realizes the truth of your masthead Orwell quote. For five seasons, Heisenberg has been in front of his nose, but after constant struggle, he finally sees it. Counting the days.
I get excited. You get excited too.
Copyranter, who doesn’t like much, likes this ad a lot:
“I GOT MY PERIOD.” And with those words, Hello Flo just won Ad of the Year (so far).
What sets Hello Flo apart from other delivery options (besides the amazing spot) is that they’re a subscription service that automatically ships your care package “when you want it with what you want,” according to their website. If you’re an American woman, I don’t have to tell you about the traditional hush-hush nature of this country’s menstruation advertising, with all the never say the p-word, “blue liquid” commercials through the years.
Well, this sassy little girl just changed that flo. The following words come out of her mouth:
• PERIOD
• RED
• GYNO
• MENSTRUATION
• VADGE!
• VAGINA!!!!!Hello Flo isn’t just for 12-year-old girls of course. But, if you get them loving your product/service early, and you’re good at it, chances are better that you’ve got a customer for a long time.
Brilliant.
“The world’s biggest – probably only – pair of flying bollocks” for a good cause:
For all of your scrotum-related Dish coverage, head here.
A big step toward normalizing pot as a positive good:
Fans attending a major NASCAR race this weekend will see a most unlikely video posted on a giant video screen shortly before entering the track: a pro-marijuana legalization ad. Outside the NASCAR Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis, the same track that hosts the famed Indianapolis 500, Marijuana Policy Project, the nation’s largest pro-marijuana legalization advocacy group, has purchased space to air – dozens of times over the weekend – a video that pushes the theme that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol.
It marks the first time a pro-marijuana legalization ad will appear so close to an entrance gate of a major sporting event. The Brickyard 400, in its 20th year, is regarded as one of NASCAR’s biggest races.
Update from a reader:
After the ad ran for several hours on Friday, it was pulled. A spokesman for the company that pulled that ad issued this statement:
“We in no way support marijuana at family events,” the spokesman said. “We didn’t expect this ad to be interpreted the way it did. We don’t want anything to do with it anymore.”
So, a major event with huge alcohol sponsors (Crown Royal & Miller Lite, anyone?), and a sport with a huge culture of alcohol consumption “doesn’t want anything to do” with marijuana. Not even a simple ad that isn’t promoting “marijuana at family events” but simply promoting the idea of an alcohol alternative in general. Wow.
I live in Colorado, so I can see first-hand that the tide is starting to turn, but decades of culture war are going to be tough to crack in some places.
Copyranter claps over a series of national flags like the one above (of Somalia):
The campaign is for Grande Reportagem, a Portuguese news magazine. It is what all print ad campaigns should be: simple and brilliant. It stops me, I read it, I get it — all in less than five seconds. The ads make me want to watch the program. Sure, the statistical representations are exaggerated, but creative license is approved here because the points made are accurate. The ads aren’t new, but they’ve been circulating on several ad posting sites this week, and I hadn’t seen them before. Ad agency: FCB, Lisbon.
Update from a reader:
That ad campaign has some obvious errors. Nearly half the population in Angola has HIV? The CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia put the number at around 3%. And that graphic suggesting that about two-thirds of Brazilians live on less than 10 dollars a month? Poverty is still bad in Brazil, but nowhere near those levels. The federal minimum wage is around $340/month.
I know the Buzzfeed post acknowledges the stats are exaggerated, but then what’s the point? What are the odds the average viewer will know that? Or that the ad campaign itself has that disclaimer?
A reader writes:
I’ve been following your long-term coverage of the NFL’s head-injury scandal with a great deal of interest. I played football in high school and it remains the only major sport I enjoy watching. But I definitely feel conflicted, if not downright guilty, about it now. How could one enjoy watching the slow, agonizing destruction of human minds?
Anyway, I suspect that Reebok has just released a device that could kill the sport dead. It’s an impact sensor for the head which can be worn under a helmet and records the number of hits at different intensities. It even has a flashing indicator recommending for players to be removed after enough dramatic hits. Here’s the product page and [above] is Youtube video describing how the thing works.
The impression I get is that a few NFL players wearing these things is going to create enough horrific data to precipitate a crisis for the game and those who are profiting from hiding the truth about football head injuries. I’d be interested in what the interested actors have to say about this thing. Will it be legal to wear in games? Will team doctors make use of them? Will players be removed from play if their indicator is going off?
It’s smart to be upfront about your product’s strengths and weaknesses:
A clever way to get people put down their fucking iPhones already:
The Offline Glass from Mauricio Perussi on Vimeo.
The Dish 