Ad of the day

An increasingly manic Gilbert Gottfried narrates an increasingly pathetic series of people who can't seem to deal with putting on shoes.

Ad of the day

Nike on the World Cup and the moment to moment declaring Godhood/wishing death that fans go through as a game progresses.

Art of the day

From Gallery of the Absurd comes Lindsay Lohan: Milkaholic.


This is in reference to the fact that she has filed a $100 million dollar lawsuit against E*Trade because she thinks the company's talking baby "Milkaholic" ad is a direct reference to her. E*Trade is expecting to counter the suit by alleging that anything that ties Lindsay Lohan to their company can only act as a detriment so why would they court that kind of failure? Also, they'll note that there's no way the baby could be a seen as a direct reference to Lohan, seeing as the baby Lindsay has some sort of discernible acting future.

In additional Lohan news the entire country of India is considering banning her from ever again setting foot on their soil after she made false claims about child trafficking, India, and her role in rescuing child slaves during a BBC documentary she participated in. You remember that BBC documentary, right?

You know Lindsay, I think we all just thought that someday you'd either be doing porn or be dead of an overdose. There was no third option we had considered. It's so great to see you just go totally off in this unexpected direction of filing frivolous $100 million dollar lawsuits against baby commercials and getting thrown out of most of South Asia before one of those two happens.

Broken News: Advertisements Declare: You're an Emasculated Pussy

MADISON AVE—Today spokespeople for the American Advertising Industry gathered to announce to the public that they think you, the American male, are a completely emasculated pussy, undeserving of love or quality goods, a disappointment to centuries of American heroes, a spineless fuck not worthy to be called a man, and a lowly wretch that they’d beat to death if only their products weren’t the cure to your sackless existence.

“You drive a gay lady car fit for the homoest of homos… you know that, right,” asked Chevy spokesman Howie Long, star of Firestorm, 8 time Pro-Bowl Defensive End, and Pro Football Hall of Famer.

“I mean, maybe you’re comfortable letting everyone know you don’t have anything dangling between your legs except for an IOU note signed by your maker, I don’t know. All I know is that you need to buy a goddamn Chevy before some longshoreman mistakes you for a Thai lady boy and makes a proper woman out of you in some filth-strewn back alley.”

“Even if you have a pickup truck and think you’re a man, I’m here to tell you that you aren’t,” Long spat disdainfully on the ground. “I bet it’s got lady steps and a sat nav and all the faggy accoutrements of the fake tough. You need a man’s truck. A Chevy. Then maybe a woman would look you in the eye or maybe let you see a boob for the first time in your existence, you pathetic virgin. I’m going to go have sex with your mother and make sure my flattop is level.”

Other spokesmen and brands were equally as harsh on their assessment of your fitness as someone who could be identified as part of the male gender.

“I ANNOUNCE SPORTS!!!” yelled CBS sports announcer and FLO TV spokesman Jim Nantz. “And if there’s one thing I fuckin’ know, it’s that you couldn’t hack it with the athletes I cover, you unmitigated weakling. Shit, unlike Howie I bet you actually have a girlfriend. Except she’s just slowly trying to wear you down into a nub of a man with constant demands for attention, a loving relationship, and shopping trips OH MY GOD THE FUCKING SHOPPING TRIPS!!!!”

“Listen, numbnuts,” Nantz continued, dropping his voice and sidling up to you. “I understand. Sometimes you gotta do some pretty fucked up shit, like listen or be present, to get some regular pussy. Hell, we all can’t announce the Masters on CBS and have the ladies throwing panties at them 24/7. I get it. But seriously, you alleged man, just get this live mobile TV system I worked up special for you and maybe, just maybe, your forefathers won’t weep in the afterlife at the complete gaywad their DNA produced.”

Some brands weren’t as nice or as optimistic about your prospects for actually using your cock at some point as FLO TV or Chevy.

Dockers announced that not only was it suspending its “Wear the Pants” campaign, but that it was getting out of the pants business entirely. In its place they’ll just craft khaki dresses and sarongs as it is their belief that you wouldn’t know what to do with men’s clothing if it walked up to you, framed out your house, drank a sixer, dunked a basketball, and played tackle football on the street with Howie fuckin’ Long.

The Dodge Charger brand set up a fund so that any “man” who wanted one could get a free sex change and gender reassignment surgery so that society will no longer have to burden itself with pretending like you would even know what a socket set is. Furthermore they announced that they would fully provide legal funding for anyone driving their ultra-manly rippling muscle car that happened to plow it into an alleged male whilst he was doing unmanly things: like treating a woman with respect, as an equal, or as anything other than a bang maid.

PepsiCo and Frito-Lay laid out a set of guidelines that you would have to pass in order to be allowed to purchase Pepsi and Doritos. It involves quoting lines from Slap Shot and a recognition test to see whether you can discern if something they read is an article from the latest issue of Playboy or a plotline from Sex and the City. Recognition of either constitutes failure.

“We’re just looking out for you… sniveling twat that you are,” said the physical embodiment of all things manly and consumer based, the Marlboro Man. “Just look at Howie over there. His name is Howie and he looks like the bouncer at a gay bar and yet he’s… SUCH A FUCKIN' MAN that we allow him to go on TV and call you a queer on behalf of us. It’s because he drives a Chevy, wear two pairs of Dockers, and don’t take no shit from no woman. Hell, we even had Betty White on during the Super Bowl to tell you just how emasculated you are.”

“Pay attention to that kind of shit, fucko. Betty White knows what a real man is and she doesn’t see a lot of them in America these days. So buy a goddamn pick-up truck already,” he concluded before the entire group just sighed, shook their heads, and walked out the room disappointed in you and the lavender scented state of the American male.

Video of the day

Tilt-shift photography strikes again. Enjoy it. It's hitting the ad airwaves and soon "This Is Our Country" will be playing over tilt-shift Chevy ads and we'll all be sick of it.

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

Your new Google ad

Message

Via Coffee Ghost comes this look at how previous Don't Ask, Don't Tell policies benefited humanity.

That's why it's nice to see the Obama Administration and the military finally moving on trying to get this repealed. And despite the overwhelming and increasing popularity of the idea (even in the military), the same hypocrites and troglodytes and fearmongers come out of the woodwork to warn how this will crack the planet in half, legalize armed pedophilia, and make the military susceptible to defeat from a sufficiently armed boy scout troop.

So with the support of the President, the Defense Department, the military, and a general population that doesn't see supporting bigotry or a tacit acceptance of bigotry as aspiring to American ideals, hopefully this can get past Congress in a reasonably sufficient amount of time. By which I mean sometime before the sun burns out. But hey, at least they're finally moving on it. I don't think we're in danger of any more Turing type situations, as I think we've advance a tiny bit since then, but hopefully we could at least avoid firing all those arab linguists that it would probably be smart to have in all those public and secret Middle Eastern wars we start.

Message

Sure, this ad might seem like a valid point. But then again, healing sick people doesn't give this country a war boner or make us feel extra manly.

I know what you're saying, "You'd think the prospect of immolated infants would be universal, be it desert or ICU." But not only is there no fiery explosion of noisy kaboom sound before an infant dies in an emergency room, but Senators on defense appropriations committees aren't allowed to wet their beaks on the means that immolated that infant in the first place. Plus: no embedded journalists in the cancer ward, either.

Sorry, I remain unmoved. We need to keep wetting our pants over every tan person that singes their groin in a failed attack while we are waging multiple ineffective, costly, and destructive wars, while not giving so much as a tinker's cuss to seriously addressing health care problems.

(h/t Sullivan)

Video of the day

I say this about you Wal-Mart, you may be a giant evil conglomerate, but at least you've decided to get entertainingly creepy. Shame you couldn't have given the clown sharp teeth or ponied up the cash for Tim Curry.

Sports attack ads

If you were watching the BCS National Championship Game, perhaps you saw the new wave of ads that are sure to dominate sports: sports based attack ads. Because this county's decline won't be truly complete until all aspects of our life take the form of our retarded political culture.



Ok, I'm for the playoff and mad that this is just another one of his campaign promises that BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA DIDN'T KEEP! But what about other important sports issues? Surely we need to start flogging the NFL and NFLPA to, for the love of God, get a collective bargaining agreement worked out so we A.) don't have a strike and miss one second of an NFL season, B.) don't see football turn into baseball with a few elite teams outspending everyone. How about the Committee to Horsewhip Bob Nutting? An impassioned plea for the Steelers to draft an offensive lineman high? A request for the Detroit Lions to stop, just stop?

Frankly I think we shouldn't be able to turn on a sporting event without seeing a sinister voice ask Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith if they hate America while flashing up pictures of Osama bin Laden and Hitler. If it'd mean one less repetitive beer ad hitting the airwaves, I'll fund it myself.

Ad of the day

This is from a Manhattan billboard for the company Weatherproof, which took an AP photo of Obama wearing one of its jackets on a trip to China, slapped their logo on it, and used it to advertise their company and what they're now marketing as "The Obama Jacket." Unsurprisingly this has provoked the ire of the White House, who notes that Obama isn't endorsing their company and that this all seems highly illegal. Nevertheless, the ad stays up because Weatherproof are intense assholes and complete media whores.

Now that Obama is pseudo-endorsing a jacket brand, what are other companies, like North Face or Columbia, going to do? Well if the These Bastards Marketing Consortium can offer a suggestion, we know one rugged world leader who would love to legally endorse a product in return for vast sums of money.


We're thinking the "Vladimir Putin Bear Skinning Knife", some sort of branded floppy hat or cargo pants, or perhaps some polonium lined boots. Drop us a line if you're interested.

Broken in Brief: ESPN promo man desperately trying to resist using "Poker Face" in upcoming ads

BRISTOL—Today during a morning ESPN staff meeting that was set to discuss final plans for the promotion and broadcasting of upcoming World Poker Tour events, veteran promo man and video editor Tom Sullivan announced to the room that he was having trouble creating any ad that didn’t strongly feature the Lady Gaga hit “Poker Face”.

“’Pa-pa-pa-poker face, pa-pa-poker face’, that’s all I can fucking hear inside my head now. I can’t think of anything else,” he was heard to exclaim in the meeting. “Shots of Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson flipping over cards and grabbing larges tacks of chips while that woman sings about muffin bluffing and how you can’t ‘read-a her poker face’. I’m fucking losing my mind here.”

As the distraught man stood in the room, broken by this fact, programming director Mark Halpin asked, “What about 'The Gambler’ by Kenny Rogers?” before taking shelter as Sullivan heaved a chair at him.

Sullivan further noted that while he felt a deep sense of shame, cliché, and unoriginality over this revelation, unless they wanted weeks upon weeks worth of poker ads featuring “Poker Face” that someone “had better name another fucking song quickly” because the Lady Gaga track had finally worn down his will and he was hours away from basing an entire ad campaign around it.

When those in the room replied that because he had both mentioned the song and sung its chorus that it too was all they could think of, Sullivan was said to have visibly died inside as a single tear rolled down his cheek.

As of press time, no one had been able to think of an alternative song.

Truth in advertising

Via Grist, comes this look at a 1962 ad placed in Life Magazine by Humble Oil. Humble went on to merge with Standard Oil and become Exxon.


Ahh, what happened? They used to take such pride in their work. Now they just pretend that it isn't happening.

Broken In Brief: Sports pretty sure it can cram juuuust a few more boner pill ads into game broadcasts

NEW YORK—Today spokesmen for Sports came together to announce that after a preliminary analysis of game broadcasts, it’s pretty sure they can cram in more ads for the wide variety of pills prescribed for erectile dysfunction.

“I know it doesn’t seem like we could get one more Cialis ad in there, but rest assured: we can,” announced a triumphant Sam Bay, press liaison for Sports. “Right now the plan is to either split screens and show two ads at once or possibly combine ads, maybe selling beer or trucks that make your cock rock-hard.”

While Sports had yet to fully conceive of a final plan, they hoped to have some preliminary breakthroughs shown to the American public during the World Series and NASCAR Cup Chase and perfected in time for the NFL playoffs.

In all they hoped that this breakthrough would finally help the sporting industry achieve its goal of turning national pastimes and treasured sporting events into awkward, hushed experiences shared between fathers and sons as conversations about zone coverage and the infield fly rule fade into uncomfortable, sideways glance-filled silences as 50 year old men appear on the TV to deliver long soliloquies about their penises not working properly and the dangers of 4 hour erections.

“Fine, whatever, I’ll take what I can get,” observed long time sports fan Dave McMurphy, who himself had to sit through an excruciating block of boner pill ads in the presence of his father and mother while watching game four of the World Series last night. “Just as long as I don’t have to hear those ‘This is ouuuuur couuuuuuuntry’ ads again. They almost drove me to kill a man during the AFC Championship last year. I'll take weird sexual tension with the people who sired me over 25-to-life any day of the week.”

Cheap Blogging Crutch 08.21

Health Care Industry Throws Away Money On "Pro-Reform" Ads (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins takes a look at all those health care industry ads that they're running in "support" of reform efforts and finds them to be a completely milquetoast nothing flurry of vague statements, fluffy bunnies, and bizarre promises. Enjoy them, this is what promising to hamstring a health care bill in order for "support" gets you. Not cheaper health care, just ads about vague concepts that kinda sound good.

US Jews protest Catholic document on salvation
Apparently Jewish leaders are shocked, shocked, to learn that Catholic bishops view interfaith dialogue as a chance to convert Jews and that Jesus is the only path to salvation. My question is this: what, you haven't noticed that's pretty much been the sole modus operandi of the Catholic Church (other than getting rich and finding some good looking altar boys) for the past, oh, 2,000 years? Still though, what's the big deal? Your book is half of our book. It's just a couple extra pages to read. Plus there's this whole part in our book where the story just repeats pointlessly 4 times. So it's not even like a whole other book. Give it a thought, for the sake of interfaith dialogue.

Justice Dept. Looking Into Whether Attorneys Broke Law at Guantanamo
In case you needed help remembering. Committing acts of torture at Gitmo: not investigated. Documenting acts of torture at Gitmo: not investigated. Giving info to detainees about their torture and torturers: investigated. Isn't it funny how that old bitch Lady Justice works?

Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall
Oh, New York Times, how I missed your stories asking us to pity the hardships of the super rich during this economic apocalypse. These poor souls are suffering the indignity of only being worth millions of dollars. How can we not all weep openly for them? I mean other than the fact that everyone has also lost money and that income inequality is at an all time high? But then I look at a man having to sell his estate and his beloved plane collection and I know who really is suffering.

Lockerbie bomber release: Anger grows over hero's welcome for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
Well done Libya, both the UK and US ask you to tone down celebrations for the return of a guy who bombed an airplane and you go out and have the dictator's son meet him in front of cheering throngs. Well done. Oh and great move Scotland, releasing a convicted terrorist who murdered 270 people just because he was sick. It's important that he's allowed to be with his family. Who could have ever foreseen this being a massive clusterfuck of stupid ideas?

Picture of the day

Via Animal New York comes this example of a time where maybe Google should have built a couple of better filters into its ad program. Sure the AP video in question is ostensibly about Iran, women, and using the internet for communication, but you weren't supposed to jumble them all up together into a plea for horny guys with an oppression fetish. Sure I've heard of targeted marketing, but I didn't think "men who watch AP news footage of revolutions and are single" was a key demo. Still at least the rioting scenes didn't cause ads for surplus rubble or discounted Korans to come up. Better luck next time.

Because Presidenting doesn't bring in the big bucks

Via Cloned in China come this example of our President having to hawk cell phones overseas in an attempt to make a little cash on the side. Much like Brad Pitt making cell phone ads in Japan so he can both have a lot of money and little knowledge of the fact that he's doing ads, Barry has decided that being President doesn't put gold plated plasma screens on the walls.

At least he picked/had his picture shadily photoshopped in an ad for a respectable company: BlockBerry, from the makers of the EyePhone. It sounds like a respectable American Canadian phone company, so that means it probably isn't made of old Walkman parts. If only Barry could get some of the Sorny/Magnetbox/Panafonics ad money, then this whole "Leader of the Free World" thing would really start being a worthwhile job to have.

AdSense

An ad drawn up for Disney/Buena Vista International by M&C Saatchi titled "Life should be a little more Disney". The first two? Rather mundane vignettes about cleaning up. The third one above...yeah...kind of flies off the rails there. I don't understand why these never went up anywhere.

Ads of the day: Buy Heroin!

Reading about the news today that battle lines are being drawn in the health care debate (AMA: "People who want a public plan can eat a bag of hell", Experts: "Go intercourse yourself AMA!", AMA: "You know, on second thought...") I happened to stumble across the good people at Pill Talk, who put together a nice little collection of old pharmaceutical ads. Heroin! Chlorophyll! Cocaine! Cigarettes! Snake Oil!

Oh for the days when Big Pharma would totally try to get you gooned up on highly addictive opiates through a series of lies, half-truths, and fear mongering about imaginary diseases that they made up. So glad they aren't allowed to do that anymore.

SI: South Africa

Quick question: how would you sell the newly imported Sports Illustrated to a South Africa yearning to read about sports and Peter King columns about Brett Favre? Here's a hint: apartheid.

Give up? By stressing Hitler and America's checkered racial history and ethnic divides. The whole black/white schism moves sports magazines, baby.



Another ad takes on the 1968 civil rights protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Olympics, while a third ad takes on Muhammad Ali vs. the draft board. It would have been better if they were able to come up with a more South Africa-centric sporting event to sell a sports magazine to South Africa, but then I guess I'm the only one that remembers Nelson Mandela beating FW de Klerk in a 1-on-1 basketball match to end apartheid. De Klerk just couldn't handle Mandela's inside game and rebounding.