Video Of The Week: Rage Against The Machine

It may have been too long since I last featured Rage Against The Machine, so I thought I could show them from yet another single from their 1999 masterpiece The Battle Of Los Angeles, this time with Guerilla Radio, directed by Honey (the husband-and-wife directing duo of Laura Kelly and Nicholas Brooks:

It's a parody of the early-to-mid 1990s Gap ads directed by Pedro Romhanyi where people would dance around in the brand's clothing in a white backdrop while the "hip" music of the day (among which punk band Rancid) ran in the background. Instead, RATM use the video to criticize the garment industry.

Dear Kitten

Advertizing done right:

WOMEN!

More often than not, I end my day having thought ''we really haven't evolved much since the 1950s'' in regards to sexism, gender equality and the like.

But once a week, I fall on old ads like this one that make me think ''oh, riiiiight'':

I mean, shit, when you put it that way, no, I'm sure she doesn't want her flaps stinking like an old kipper.

Which isn't to say we've arrived, either. As a matter of fact, I'm fairly certain we were closer to the goal in the mid-to-late 1990s than we are now.

Somewhere along the line, between putting George W. Bush in the white house as a President you'd rather ''have a beer with'' than have ''be smarter than you'', the rise of men's magazines like Maxim who may have been sarcastic when they captioned their almost-nude models' pictures but whose readership was too dumb for a second degree thought to ever emerge from their brains, and the Rise Of Redneck Culture (guns, Southern accents, pulled pork and barbecue, wrestling, wife beaters, Larry The Cable Guy, hating brown people instead of blacks being treated like ''acceptable racism'', Kid Rock, and reality TV shows glorifying child beauty pageants, dysfunctional families or junk resellers) as a whole did nothing but bring society back to at least the early 1980s.

And the Conservatives in general (and Republicans in particular) hyping up the 1950s as if the Cold War, segregation and women at home were ideals worth going back to, and pounding their message on their own infomercial network (Fox News) have done nothing to deter from dangerously falling behind again. In fact, they strongly encourage it.

Perhaps a few of them even have stock in Lux kebab soaps.

Target's Crotchless Models

There are Photoshop Fails, and then there are utter fucking failures. Target's latest ad campaign falls into the latter category:

Does this look right?

Look closely...

They chopped her lady-parts off!

I doubt they were taking a stance against the hyper-sexualization of women in media and advertizing, which means they just went way-overboard on the chopping. Oh, while over-extending to mutant-like disproportions other parts:

In the picture just above (also weirdly cropped at the crotch) and the first two from the top, her left arm goes almost to her knees.

Like, why? Ok, the fashionable ''thigh gap'' (that most people find disgusting, by the way) thing, maybe. But the arm? And was her vagina bulging so much that it made her thighs stick together?

So many questions, none of which I want answers to. But fuck Target, at least.

And Now For Something Completely Safe (For Children)

A lot drove the internets crazy this weekend, and it didn't let up when the week started.

After numerous online and regular-life talking about it, I'm too drenched to even attempt to write about the Woody Allen rape thing (did he do it? did he not?), except to say this: we don't know, and there are no facts proving nor disproving. It's more moral to believe the victim than the accused, which is why we have courtrooms and legal systems, but people's opinions on this matter are just a reflection of their own prejudices. I'm trying not to have any. So I'm taking a rain check on this one.

I will, however, go ''light'' and talk about the Super Bowl halftime show, starring Bruno Mars and featuring the Red Hot Chili Peppers, doing the opposite of lip-synching - instrument-synching:

Flea explained today that having live bands play is too much of an intangible for the NFL (unlike, say, a quarterback sack that would concuss a player and have him removed from the game, obliterating his team's chances of winning, or a half-hour power outage), so they use play-back for the instruments and only go live with the vocals - and the Chili Peppers deliberately chose not to pretend to plug in out of respect for their fans.

But playing with - and second fiddle to - Bruno Mars was ok with their fans?

The NFL should wise up and learn from this, and have bands go live. Or just go all-out theater and run scenes from Macbeth or re-enact Al Panico's speech from Any Given Sunday. Or just show more fucking ads, it's what most people are tuning in to see anyway.

Fonts And Nonsense

I came across this article about a Pepsi ad about a month ago, but time hasn't really been on my side of late, so I delayed posting about it until now. Which is silly, really, because there isn't really much to say, because seeing is believing and forming your own opinion:

If it looks to you like it says ''PEPSI X RAPE'', that's because it almost does, as the article states:

Pepsi is quickly learning this lesson after partnering with Japanese clothier A Bathing Ape.

Nothing suspicious there; collaborations happen all the time.

But to promote the brand’s AAPE line, Pepsi chose a font that might skew the meaning a bit for the casual passerby.

I'm not one to be easily offended - if at all; as a matter of fact, I'm usually the first one to promote offensive stuff, because I find North Americans hypocritial about being über politically correct in their speech and yet borderline psychotic in their actions and beliefs (particularly the right-wing, pro-life, pro-death penalty, ''don't touch my guns/don't tread on me'', vaguely-to-extremely racist and violent in their tone with everyone who disagrees with them folks).

But that's precisely why I would avoid, as a marketing professional, the use of a font which involuntarily - I hope - associates a household name in the beverage industry with one of the worst crimes one could commit, probably on par with murder: the rise of violence in our public discourse in the Age Of The Internets has brought forth a very loud consortium of voices calling for and promoting violence against women; sure, a lot of them are just trolling, but in a world where public shootings occur more than once a week, the creeps are no longer afraid to come out of the woodwork and seem to be encouraged by a certain public spotlight to try to one-up their brethren.

We don't need to further encourage them via that large a brand-name recognition. I probably wouldn't have minded if it was a brand I truly despised, or a start-up that I could associate with rapists, psychopaths and other dudebros from the start; free speech does mean one (or one brand) can choose its target audience, just like Barilla decided they didn't need the gay clientele, or Denny's didn't need black customers. But the second-largest soft drink company in the world probably should have been more careful...

Scent Of A Woman

There's weird, then there's just plain bizarre.

First, watch this hilarious video, then I'll explain the premise:


Le premier parfum à l'odeur de vagin : Vulva by Spi0n

So, their website claims:

VULVA Original is not a perfume but the real erotic scent of a woman.

 Which they put in a glass vial.

This long lasting scent will awaken the erotic fantasy that lay deep in your mind.

With a quick swipe of the roll-on applicator your fantasies will be indulged with not only the memories of an exotic, aroused woman, but also her musky vaginal scent. Only a small drop is needed to make it last for hours...

Smell like post-sex for hours, without having had sex. It's win-win, really, if you can't get anything else.

Or if you want ta make your woman uselessly jealous. Of ride on public transit pretending to be a womanizer in the hopes that other females might be attracted to ''the stench of your success''.

It's only $33 a vial, or 3-for-$85. If it does, indeed, carry actual ladies' juices, collected a drop at a time, then it's well worth it. They also offer a vial+panty pack ($91) if you want to heighten your level of pretend to pretentious new heights...

When Olympians Become Escorts

I started writing this piece in December, and somehow it got shelved until now, lost in the shuffle of drafts, Life, work, music, and a health scare. But it's the type of story that makes the news worth reading, that awesome books and shitty made-for-TV movies are made of: an Olympian athlete who even ran for the gold medal, rich, beautiful, part-time motivational speaker and full-time mother led a secret life for a full year in which she was a high-class escort, servicing men for $600 an hour in New York, Las Vegas, Chicago and Houston.

Not because she was in deep financial trouble - she did it by choice. For fun.

“Well, after my first date, I was hooked, and have been doing my best to visit Las Vegas as often as my schedule allows (I run my own business in my real world life).”

From the article:

(Suzy) Favor Hamilton described the escort business as “exciting,” an illicit midlife diversion from her routine existence, one in which she operates a successful Madison, Wisconsin real estate brokerage with her husband, delivers motivational speeches, and does promotional work for various businesses and groups, including Disney’s running series and Wisconsin’s Potato & Vegetable Growers Association. She said that only her husband Mark, 44, was aware of her escort work, but that, “He tried, he tried to get me to stop. He wasn’t supportive of this at all.”

While most clients knew her by the name ''Kelly'', she admitted her true identity to some of them:

 Favor Hamilton answered that as a world-class athlete she was conditioned to believe she was invincible, and that doubts and concerns were counterproductive thoughts. During a subsequent conversation she brought up Tiger Woods’s tumultuous fall, saying that, “I mean, he’s the biggest athlete ever. He obviously thought he could never get caught.”

 As a runner, you may have seen her look like this:

As an escort, though, her profile page had her looking like this:

I guess she had a thing for stretching. And spreading her legs - no pun intended.

Customers who were interested could schedule a ''date'' right on her webpage:

Hard to imagine after seeing this that her collegiate career at the University of Wisconsin was so dominating (she is the most decorated female athlete in NCAA track and field history) that the Big Ten Conference’s female athlete of the year award was named after her. Although Americans are so prude, that could change sooner than we think.

She has appeared in national ads for Reebok, Clairol, Oakley, and Pert Plus and released a swimsuit calendar.

Here is an ad she did for Nike:



Sex and Life intertwine. It's a discussion worth having as a society, opening our boundaries and minds, broadening our horizons and definitions. It's funny that in another story I haven't published yet, I explore sexuality in the Olympic Village. I'll try to have it done with soon, as a kind of follow-up to this one. Apparently, the place/neighbourhood where athletes reside during the Games end up being orgies - just like the Greeks intended. Hot, healthy people in their physical prime, drunk from victory or from defeat, locked in a ghetto and knowing whatever happens there has to stay there because once they leave, they go back to their 'normal' lives in their respective countries, and may never see each other again anyway, leading to some taking full advantage of the situation. And possibly creating habits and patterns and a sense of entitlement and egotistical satisfaction they get hooked on. But I digress, that story's for another day.

Calorie Wise

Who can you trust when it comes to labeling the calorie content of food? Who makes sure the labels are accurate? What constitutes ''healthy'' food?

Here's a 5-minute, unscientific demonstration:

So If I Go To Barbados...

... everywhere I go, I'll see Rihanna, who spends her time between Miami, New York and Los Angeles?

On many of the hundreds of beaches, playing dominoes with the locals, riding horses, walking in trails?

She can be everywhere at once!

Gun Ads

This senseless violence. Constant.

And the debates, which used to be solely about ''gun control'', for or against, the rest of the world failing to understand the United States were born out of gunfire and it would be damn near impossible to take them away, paranoid as people can get.

And now the new debate on mental health and health care.

It's all good, but it misses some points.

In the culture of violence we're living in, in the instant celebrity world we're in, there remain to this day automatic weapon ads in ''normal'' men's magazines and other places, and this website has tracked a lot of them down. Wow. Here's (an old) one:

''Accidental discharge impossible''; heck, I can't even say that about my own body these days, seeing as I have uncontrollable diarrhea every time I move a muscle located between my knees and throat...

Holy Discontent, Batman!

40+ years in, and it still hasn't kicked in...



The ad features Batman (not Adam West), Robin (Burt Ward), and Batgirl (Yvonne Craig).

How Marketing Consultants Get Fired

Shell, the international oil-guzzling money-making corporation and polluter, had a flash of genius: ''let's ask people on the internet to provide us with slogans because the ad agencies we use overcharge and, well, come up with crap''.

How could that go wrong?

The internet can't be that full of trolls, tech-savvy teens, protesters and 99%-ers, can it?

Guess again. The site is here, and they're doing their best to remove unwanted content as it comes, but too many are coming in and a few are still up.

I downloaded a few of my favourite ones, although some were taken away:

Hard to believe someone isn't going to lose their job(s) over this. Then again, it's not like a whole bunch of peoples' opinions on the subject will change: those against Shell won't become more against them, and those ''for'' excessive drilling haven't been moved the other way by the ecological disasters so far. And economists like the money that comes out of buying and selling petroleum, as do politicians, who get paid by the oil companies to watch an industry that was ethical enough 100 years ago kill off dozens of animal species and start wars all over the planet...

Best Movie Poster Ever?

 Certainly the busiest. And the one with the most 1980s action stars on it.

Could use some Ving Rhames, Timothy Dalton, Samuel L. Jackson, George Clooney and Milla Jovovich, for some 90s feel (and some Kiefer Sutherland and Matt Damon for a 00s touch), but, uh, on a budget, a schedule and a plot - hopefully - it is quite the feat.

United Colours Of Irrelevance

Ooh, man-on-man love. How daring, risqué, original, fun.

Ooh, religious leaders - and definitely not religious icons.

Ooh, a brand that hasn't mattered in 20 years.

There's a reason why it took me two days to report on it: I truly, honestly didn't give a fuck about it. But it seems the internet isn't quick enough, and some people still hadn't seen it. You're welcome.

Now, on to more important stuff.

Shatner's Choice

After a post about Apple, why not a look back at a Commodore ad featuring none other than Montrealer William Shatner?

When Republicans Are Quotable

Ha!

What's best is that this was all in last night's debate - and there were even more quotes that could have been taken not-quite-so-out-of-context for even more ads!

Rick Perry, Model American

I hate these fucking ads, and I despise those who star in them even more - and those who make them the most.

Barack Obama wouldn't be ''President Zero'' if he didn't have to fight the Republicans every time he tries to corrrect the mess they've made...

Dead Smokers

When trying to make a point, it's important to not contradict yourself or give opponents an 'out' in proving you wrong.

Case in point, this list of ''dead celebrity smokers'', which advocates against the circulation (via film or the media) of ''cool people'' and celebs smoking, featuring the likes of Nat 'King' Cole, Winston Churchill and Sammy Davis Jr., but also still living celebs such as Johnny Depp, Russell Crowe and Jennifer Aniston.

I mean sure, smoking is bad, and showing smokers in the media encourages not just kids but all sorts of impressionable people to light up a cancer stick. But hosting a site of ''dead'' celebrities with many of them being still alive kind of moots the point, doesn't it?

Wrap My Banana

As you can see in the above picture, no, it wasn't a euphemism for ''put a condom on my penis''. But nice try. At least that would have been smart.

Intelligence is not what prompted fruit company Del Monte to one-up Nature and add an extra layer of ''protection'' over bananas - this time in plastic. No, it was pure greed. They plan on selling these in gas stations and corner/convenience stores, thus not only extending the marketplace for their product, but also quadrupling its price tag.

My favourite quote of the article is the one that closes it:

‘It is a great product and consumer feedback shows a marked taste benefit too.’

The consumer has finally won - and by this I don't mean ''they'll finally get the product they want'', not by any stretch of the imagination. No, in this age of Big Business and Big Advertising running (ruining?) our lives, in a world where market research is so prevalent and common it has actually saturated its own market, People are standing up and telling these companies ''really? This is your New Idea? Yes, please, by all means, kill yourself with it.''

They did it with the music industry by not purchasing what the major labels (now reduced to 3, soon 2 conglomerates), they did it with the film industry by not attending theaters anymore, they did it to television advertisers by using TiVos, and to network TV in general by supporting cable networks and their original programming - and they're doing it now with the food companies, telling them to choke on their own, inevitable leftovers.

Now, they hope to do it to bankers, politicians and car salesmen next.