advertisingwithoutpity

Jesus Christ!

Kanye West on the upcoming cover of Rolling Stone:

Don't be a heartless asshole. Buy my cheese.

I was flipping through a magazine the other day and did a double take when I saw this ad. At first I thought the headline must be some kind of an inside joke within the cheese industry, a piece of jargon de fromage with which I was unfamiliar. But the more I looked at it, the more I became certain that this was done in earnest, that Cabot wants me to buy their cheese because this elderly cheese farmer is begging me to do so. Not sure if I've ever seen an advertiser resort so blatantly to GUILT as a communications strategy.

I do, in fact, feel sorry for this man, but only because of his outfit. Quite tragic.

I'm SO going to Ireland now

I was flipping through Smithsonian magazine the other day; not because I wanted to but because it happened to be near the toilet.

Anyway, I spotted this gem from the Ireland Tourism Board and thought I'd share.

The crazy thing is that somebody somewhere got paid to make this. The headline: "The Irish really are lucky. They get to live here."  Now shame on me for not being an expert on Irish architecture but is this a famous building? And famous or not, are the people who live here really that lucky? Sure, it's a nice, cozy place but "lucky" isn't really the word I would use to describe the people who live here. "Rustic" perhaps?

This debate, of course, is far from the point. Shouldn't the ad make me want to visit Ireland?

What the fuck was this creative team thinking? I'm very confused.

Anyone know who did this ad? I'm starting to think that this industry needs more self-policing. If somebody out there can find the responsible parties, I promise to get to the bottom of this. We simply shouldn't allow ads like this to happen.

The Printed Turd

The first real ad medium (print) appears to be a dying one.

One big reason: nobody is reading magazines any more—especially dudes. Frankly, we'd rather be playing video games or checkin' out porn on the interweb.

That said, print is still the medium most ad students learn first. Why? Because ideas (or lack thereof) cannot hide in print.

So why is it that most print blows as much as it does? Most of it, in fact, is downright laughable.

In the biz, we love to critique television, but print seems to get a free pass, as if it's OK to screw up here as long as you get the TV right or you have a sweet viral campaign.

Sorry, lazy creatives, there's no free pass here at AWP. I'm watching you.

(Below, we see that Plantronics headsets were used on the moon. And judging by the woman in this photo, their headsets also appear to be quite popular on the showchoir scene as well.)

Turd of the Day

Headline: "Marketing. Manufacturing. Marigolds. Whatever line of business you're in, Verizon Broadband can help it blossom."

Holy mother of God this ad is a disgrace.

I'm shocked and awed for three reasons:

1) A team came up with this idea and considered it good enough to present to their creative director.

2) A creative director decided this idea was good enough to present to a client.

3) A client liked this idea enough to go out and shoot it.

Hane-ous

Martin Agency, did you do this? If so, I'm very sorry. You must be getting bent over by the folks at Hanes pretty badly in order for you to have to put a crapwad of a campaign like this together.