AdFreak

This week's 5 most-read stories on AdFreak

Tim Nudd — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:35:15 -0400

1. McDonald's Canada takes Monopoly money
    2. J. Crew ad horror: Boy has painted toenails!
3. Manwich ads yanked for slapping girly men
    4. Zombie ad unwelcome next to funeral home
    5. Auto dealer's ad likens women to used cars

See the top stories from previous weeks here.

McDonald's Philippines ads: I'm lovin' them

David Griner — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:28:04 -0400

This week's morality debate over a charming new McDonald's ad in the Philippines underscores something many Americans might not know: McDonald's ads are awesome in the Philippines. The work in recent years by the local office of DDB strikes me as reminiscent of the fast-food chain's U.S. commercials in the 1980s, when the Federal Trade Commission and consumer groups weren't in quite such a lather about marketing to kids. Check out one of the earlier youth-oriented Philippine spots below, and another after the jump. The stories are so well told, translation isn't even required.

Car dealer's sexist ad has companion piece

Tim Nudd — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:27:14 -0400

On Tuesday, we wrote about all the hand-wringing that greeted a Canadian auto ad that compared women to used cars. "You know you're not the first. But do you really care?" the ad said, next to the image of a woman posing provocatively. The ad got ripped apart for being sexist. But it turns out the dealer, Dale Wurfel, ran a similar ad in the same Ontario paper the very next day with the same headline—this time featuring a man. Ah, the plot thickens. Men, it turns out, are a lot like used cars, too! Clearly, this complicates things, and makes it harder to moralize about the first execution (particularly since the second ad had clearly been produced before the scandal—not as a result of it). At the very least, it seems to level the playing field. Depending on your point of view, either we're all completely empowered, or we're all incorrigible sluts—or most likely, both! Of course, you'd need to run the ads side by side, rather than on successive days, to get this message of equality across most clearly. See both full ads after the jump. UPDATE: As mentioned in comments, the guy above does look kind of familiar.

'Times' irks geek girls with 'Thrones' review

David Griner — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:28:12 -0400

The New York Times is taking a quiver full of barbs today, as female fantasy lovers respond to the paper's laughably parochial review of HBO's new series Game of Thrones. The review, by Times critic Ginia Bellafante, is "a flaming insult to geek girls," notes Amy Ratcliffe on her blog, Geek With Curves. While it's easy to understand some of the review's criticisms—namely, the show's confusingly large cast and complicated intrigues—you can also see why some might feel the writeup is sexist in its discussion the show's lurid sexual subplots, which the writer doesn't seem to realize are pulled straight from the books by George R.R. Martin. "The true perversion," Bellafante writes, "is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise." Ah yes, nothing attracts the female TV-watching demo quite like graphic sex! Another head-scratcher: "Game of Thrones is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population's other half." Wait, is this the same "other half" that has made fantasy one of the most popular genres in both literature and Hollywood? You don't have to be a geek girl to be baffled by this review; you just have to live in 2011. Hat tip to Christopher Baccus.

Skittles stays weird in new global campaign

Tim Nudd — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:09:03 -0400

A magical Skittles rainbow that gets broken. A tiny dude stuffed into a weird wall closet. Giant trench-coated pigeons pecking Skittles off the ground. The candy brand's commercials remain as weird as ever in TBWA\Chiat\Day New York's new global campaign—targeting non-U.S. markets from Europe to Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. According to the agency: "The new work is designed to have the look and feel of the current U.S. campaign, but at the same time it will rewind the clock to earlier, more elemental Skittles work." The first three spots focus on "the idea of the rainbow and draw literal connections between the candy and the rainbow." One ad is below; two more after the jump.

Unstick your moronic children with Walmart

David Kiefaber — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:27:28 -0400

This Walmart ad from The Martin Agency returns to the familiar theme of finding everything you want there, even items that have nothing in common and look really suspicious without context. I hope the kid's parents explained why they were buying all that stuff. Not that any jaded Walmart cashier would believe them, but loading all that stuff on the conveyor belt in complete silence would be excruciating. Whatever, at least there aren't any screaming clowns this time.

10 years later, Verizon guy finally speaks up

David Gianatasio — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:03:41 -0400

The Atlantic has published a profile of Paul Marcarelli, Verizon's "Can you hear me now?" guy. What's next, a three-part series on Flo from Progressive Insurance? But actually, it turns out the Marcarelli piece is quite provocative, with a recurring and ironic theme of his being stifled from talking by the marketer—raising salient points about consumerism, identity and the failure to communicate in our media-drenched society. There are lots of fun, juicy tidbits about the bespectacled actor's decade-long tenure as the telecom's pitchman. We learn, for example, that Verizon made him sign a Draconian contract (just like its customers!) and wouldn't let him discuss his experiences with others. And Verizon didn't burn up the phone lines to tell Marcarelli it was phasing out his ads, choosing instead to inform him via email. A tad impersonal, but at least there was no danger of the network dropping the call. (He'll still do some work for the company, but says, "I'm no longer committed to them like I was.") The story takes a dark turn when Marcarelli, who is gay, tells of being hassled for years by a bunch of kids driving by his home at night in an SUV. The harassment grew more profane until, he says, "they started screaming 'faggot' up at my house." Afraid that coming out under such circumstances might imperil his ad gig, Marcarelli declined to file a police report. Currently, he's promoting The Green, a film he co-wrote and produced that tells the story of a town that turns against a gay couple, one of whom is a schoolteacher. The ultimate irony, of course, is that Marcarelli has many interesting things to say, but had to disconnect to truly find his voice.

New York billboard knows just how you feel

Tim Nudd — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:27:34 -0400

Billboards are so damn stoic—it's nice to come across one that has real feelings. Or at least, app-enabled emoticons. ADstruc, an auction and listing-based marketplace for outdoor advertising, put this particular billboard up near the Holland Tunnel in downtown Manhattan. "Today I'm feeling…" it says. If you download a special app for your iPhone and aim it at the board, you'll see little emoticons appear, indicating the often-fragile interior state of the otherwise impressive-seeming mass-market communications medium. You can also switch the emoticon, capture the image and send to your friends to tell them how you're feeling. It's all very emotional. The board was created by Tronic and sponsored by JWT New York, SPREAD Art, Fuel and Culture magazine.

Copycat-hating game firm does copycat ads

Rebecca Cullers — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:31:54 -0400

Video-game maker Valve—which is now producing its own creative because ad agencies, according to marketing chief Doug Lombardi, are "pretty close to worthless"—has created some new videos for Portal 2 aimed at potential investors of the fictional company Aperture Science. The clips are amusing, as they profile Aperture's more famous and disturbing inventions—and feature the voice of J.K. Simmons (moonlighting from his job as the Famers Insurance professor) as Aperture president and founder Cave Johnson. What interests me is Lombardi's complaint that agencies were giving him "copycat treatments" and "cliché treatments" for his ad campaigns. But pretending that a fictional company is real—that's your trailblazing innovation? The same stuff I've been blogging about for only the last two years? Kind of a crappy way of showing your agency-free individuality. Still, credit where it's due—the spots are pretty great. Who cares if it's derivative if you have robots getting smashed and a good voice actor? I'm in! Three more spots after the jump.

McDonald's pulls spot for its too-young love

David Kiefaber — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 09:56:52 -0400

Intolerance Week continues on AdFreak, as we turn to the Philippines, where McDonald's, under pressure from Catholic leaders, has agreed to pull a TV commercial because it shows a young boy and girl having an innocent romance and almost holding hands. In the ad, the girl asks the boy if she is his girlfriend, to which he replies: "I'm not ready. Girlfriends are demanding. They want this, they want that." Eventually he relents when she says she just wants french fries. Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez condemned the ad for supposedly telling children that "it's all right to enter into courtship, and it could pave the way for the very young to be lax and carefree." Yes, heaven forbid kids enjoy their years free of emotionally crippling adult neuroses. Father Melvin Castro echoed Iñiguez's sentiments, claiming that the ad cheapens relationships. Not sure what they're so pious about, seeing as how they'll both surely burn in Hell for essentially forcing people to sympathize with McDonald's. On the plus side, at least the boy in the ad is firmly heterosexual, unlike the slappees in the Manwich campaign or the would-be transgendered boy with the pink toenails in the J. Crew ad.