Spam For Two

The man contacted advertising watchdogs after being bombarded with ads telling him his penis size was a "disappointment" and that his partner might be "turned off".

I have a lot of sympathy for the complainant in this case as I've also been bombarded with emails telling me I need to increase my penis size.

I really shouldn't have given my email address to my wife.

The Bleakest Blog Post In The World

I've not come across "The Blog of Eternal Disappointment" before, but thought this take on that Spec Savers advert was inspired. Inspired by what, I am not quite sure.

He has no money for eye-tests. Sheep wool has fallen alarmingly in value over the last few years and he has no savings with which to supplement his income. With that one simple act, the accidental shearing of the dog, he realises that he can no longer look after the farm. With no son to pass the responsibility to, his livelihood is gone, his home is gone, his future is gone, his past is gone, and the countless thousands of hours of labour that he, his father, and his father's father put into the land are nothing more than wasted effort and folly.

His life is at an end.

And Specsavers think that's a suitable story with which to sell you some glasses. The bastards.

Trashing Your Product

In the East Midlands one of the adverts that is on local radio stations constantly is for the University of Derby. It is plugging some kind of 12 week business courses. It features an employer being very impressed by the applicants commitment in attaining these qualifications whilst the applicant knows that it was actually just a three month course.

In other words they are essentially advertising as a feature, not a bug, of the course that employers might mistake the qualifications for something deeper and more expansive. So they are effectively telling employers that their qualifications are a bit of a con, and presumably diminishing the value of whatever proper students come out with.

Good work advertisers!

Coming Soon To A Newspaper Near You.

Conservatism in action:

"As you know, as part of our economic action plan, one of the things we’ve of course done is to step up government advertising. One of the purposes of that has been to support media outlets during the recession that have been particularly hard-hit."

The government in question is the Canadian Tory government. I doubt that our Tories will be much better after the election.

Gillette- Razor Of Cheats.

You've got to feel sorry for Gillette, they go to the trouble of recruiting three of the most prominent sportsmen in the world to advertise their razors. They've obviously gone to a lot of trouble to ensure that they've got athletes who aren't merely highly talented but admired for their clean living. So they can't be too happy about the last fortnight:

1. November 17th, Thierry Henry's handball knocks Ireland out of the World Cup, thus giving Henry a reputation as a cheat.
2. November 27th, Tiger Woods crashes his car and seriously injures himself in a comical escapade running away from his irate wife (allegedly), thus giving Woods a reputation as a love cheat.

No doubt some hideous skeleton is going to fall out of Roger Federer's closet next week.

I Ho.

Are Disney within their rights to object to "Ho White & the Seven Dwarfs"?

The article talks about potential copyright and licencing issues, but as long as the beer company isn't using aspects of the story that Disney created I don't see what they are doing wrong. Snow White was a traditional folk tale that Walt Disney took and made a feature film based on, but surely that doesn't give them the rights to all future interpretations of a story that they did not create.

I Didn't Even Know Virgin Operated In China

Is it me or do the air hostesses in the Chinese version of that Virgin ad seem less welcoming than in the original?:




Via Mick Hartley.

Advertising Disguised As News.

On the ITV news this evening there was a report about the closure of Woolworths and the impending loss of jobs. This is a pretty depressing story and of tremendous importance to thousands of Woolworths employees. It is therefore extremely tacky to use the news report to plug the Christmas single by the latest winner of ITV's 'X-Factor' by explaining that it was one of the items being sold by the chain and then cutting to a clip of her murdering 'Hallelujah'.

Tobacco Adverts.

I had a thought yesterday, just the one, why is it that tobacco companies that have been banned from advertising in many countries including the UK don't advertise more frequently on the internet, out of some country where advertising is still legal? It would seem to make a lot of sense from their point of view seeing as they could get around the laws of each individual country quite easily by doing this.