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Television Media It's funny. Laugh. United States

10 Ads The US Won't See 536

Posted by Hemos from the it-rots-your-brain-it-does dept.
prostoalex writes "Some ads made by world's leading advertising agencies for well-known brands will never be seen in the United States. The Gucci G-Spot turned out to be too risque, video for Drug-Free America was deemed too disgusting, Internet's favorite Honda "Cog" commercial won't air due to the high prices for a 2-minute spot, and Japanese commercials with American actors have contracts preventing the companies to run the same ads in the US. AdAge provides a link to the pictures and video (Windows Media .ASF format, alas) of the 10 best unaired commercials." I can get the ASFs working under VLC.
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10 Ads The US Won't See More

10 Ads The US Won't See

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  • I 4 1 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zangief ( 461457 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @05:54PM (#7831104) Homepage Journal
    don't welcome any new ads. The only good ad is the blocked/skipped ad.
    • true that my friend. Haven't seen many ads since I got my Tivo 6 months ago.

    • Ads will HAVE to become better very soon (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:14PM (#7831242) Journal

      don't welcome any new ads. The only good ad is the blocked/skipped ad.

      Yeah, but I hate to break it to you: you're not the majority. How many non-football fans watch the SuperBowl each year because of the commericials? A lot. That's because it's the one time of the year that you can be guaranteed that advertisers are honestly trying to catch your attention. So much of the other advertisements are bland and uninteresting. They're just not trying.

      I think as technologies like TiVo start to take off there is going to be more and more pressure placed on adverising companies to come up with innovative ads that people won't mind sitting through. The real pickle for these companies is constantly coming up with new ads that are entertaining and push the limits and still not offensive to the majority of the American public. When I was younger I often wondered why ads suck so much. Surely there are tons of witty people who could write clever ads! Why aren't they being given the chance? Well, as I grew older I started to realize that a lot of humor is actually borderline offensive to a lot of people. Or they're simply too slow to 'get' the joke. Humor is, of course, the cheapest way to construct an interesting commerical. Other ways include novel imagery but this takes more talent and, arguably, more money.

      Anyhow, I'm thinking that in the next 5 years we're going to see an improvement in the quality of advertisements to the point that they start to become entertainment in their own right. If companies do not do this, their ads are simply going to get blocked/skipped by an increasingly dissatisfied viewing public.

      GMD

      • So much of the other advertisements are bland and uninteresting. They're just not trying.

        It's not just that, either. It's that the same commercial gets shown every break, and occasionally twice in the same break. We have a commercial-skipping VCR, so on those rare occasions when we actually watch something non-timeshifted, we're boggled that anyone would voluntarily watch TV that way. Even when it's a decent commercial, by the fourth time in fifteen minutes it's just unwatchable.
      • I hate to break it to you: you're not the majority. How many non-football fans watch the SuperBowl each year because of the commericials?

        Along similar lines, I hate to break it to you but Superbowl ads do not reflect peoples' opinions of ads in general. I would tend to agree with Zangief, that most people consider most ads (excluding those rare ones such as Superbowl ads or Honda's "Cog") at best ignorable, and if possible would completely eliminate them altogether.


        I think as technologies like TiVo s

      • I beg to differ (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @07:38PM (#7831761)
        "Ads will HAVE to become better very soon"

        Apparently you missed some of the finer points of this bit here. [slashdot.org] Why make better commercials when you can redefine the medium to require viewing of commercials? Think "Disney DVD."

        We already have the "broadcast bit" in our flavor of ATSC now, what's to stop some new standard including a "no channel surfing bit?" It would allow broadcasters to charge even more to advertisers, which they would then argue would enable more/better shows. Why wouldn't Congress let this happen?

    • Doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)

      by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:04AM (#7833413)
      According to another article [adage.com] at AdAge.com (the same periodical as the main story comes from):

      CINCINNATI (AdAge.com) -- Recent internal research by Procter & Gamble Co. indicates that consumers who fast-forward through ads with digital personal video recorders such as TiVo still recall those ads at roughly the same rates as people who see them at normal speed in real time.
      Source: March 17, 2003

      Can't link/copy the whole article, because they charge a few $$ for it.
  • No ads is good ads.

  • But... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Click 0 Nett ( 525613 ) * on Monday December 29, 2003 @05:56PM (#7831110)
    I was under the impression that the Honda "Cog" commercial wasn't released in the US was because the car which was being advertised was a UK-only model! Anyway, I've seen it, and it's very impressive if you can stand the low-quality file from the Honda site.

    • Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Buran ( 150348 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:03PM (#7831157)
      Actually, we do get it here in the US (though not the wagon version -- a huge shame, as the wagon is gorgeous) -- as the Acura TSX [acura.com].

    • Re:But... (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Afrosheen ( 42464 )
      Just as a post-script for those interested.. the cog commercial is ALL REAL. Nothing was rigged in the whole commercial, it's just a perfectly timed, well-executed setup. The tires were all counterweighted inside at the top to get them to roll uphill. I think there is only one place they cheated..and it took them around 60 takes to get it right.

      • Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)

        by NeuroKoan ( 12458 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:20PM (#7831289) Homepage Journal
        Actually, it took 606 takes

        http://www.snopes.com/autos/business/hondacog.as p

        • Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by gidds ( 56397 ) <slashdot@NospaM.gidds.me.uk> on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:35PM (#7831404) Homepage
          Yes, but what you see is only 2 of them. (There's one join in the middle; but there is no other camera trickery or effects; it's all physically happening as you see it. Quite an achievement.)

        • They did use CG/Editing. Honda's claims are false (Score:4, Informative)

          by HEbGb ( 6544 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @07:21PM (#7831695)
          I think that Honda, and the ad agency, is lying. [millimeter.com]

          Rob Steiner, agency producer for Wieden & Kennedy, says that not only were practical effects more attuned to the tagline of the commercial, but CG would not have done the job visually, either. "You couldn't create that type of tension with CG," he says.

          However, computers did come into play in the editing phase. Indeed, what looks to be one continuous shot is actually two, seamlessly stitched together by Flame operator Barnsley of The Mill in London.

          "Our reason for shooting it in two 60-second pieces was damage limitation, really," explains Steiner. "We knew everything physically worked." But the contraption simply wouldn't fit down the length of a single wall at the Paris studio, so half was built and filmed on one side and half on the other.

          With the intent of making the spot look like one continuous take, lighting and shadows in the studio had to look smooth over the full two minutes. Still, "due to constant movement, we couldn't even give [Barnsley] a good lighting reference," says Steiner.

      • Re:But... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Alan Partridge ( 516639 )
        Not true, there is ONE join where the exhaust silencer rolls end over end.

        In the UK, Honda gave it out on a free DVD to anyone who 'phoned - I got mine, but the idiots who encoded it did it letterbox rather than anamorphic.

        I blame the agency for not knowing the difference.

      • Re:But... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rjforster ( 2130 )
        The cheating part is with the elliptical exhaust component which only just rolls far enough to hit the next thing. That is only cheating in the sense that they stiched two shots together, not in the computer graphics from scratch sense. Obviously it's approx half way through the ad. Also one of the sections only _ever_ worked properly on the one take where it all worked properly, can't remember which that was.
        The ironic part is that channel4 here in the UK had done a 3h show on the 100 best adverts in the h
      • Two words: Fischli & Weiss [artnet.com].

        'Nuff said. Look it up if you don't know.

        But OK, I can't resist, so:

        I remember when the thing came out and there was the point that they "cheated" once or twice. I believe the "cheating" was less about physics than about photography - maybe the speakers?

        In any case I hope Peter and David were paid well for this, 'cause if not then it's a rip-off of the highest order.

        Not that they'd find that a bad thing necessarily... we artists are usually tickled pink to be plagiarize

    • Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Fulcrum of Evil ( 560260 )

      I was under the impression that the Honda "Cog" commercial wasn't released in the US was because the car which was being advertised was a UK-only model!

      Who cares what model they showed? They're advertising their build quality.

    • Say what? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Sviams ( 708968 )
      It's morning here, and as I started reading "people upset because they won't get commercials" I figured I had gotten it all wrong and so I read it again.
      And again.

      Now, I know I'm gonna get stomped down for being a communist or something, but if I were you, I'd be quite happy not to get flooded by any more mindless brainwash designed to turn us all into happy Consumers than we already are!

      We do not need commercials to tell us what we need.

  • Another ad America won't see (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gyan ( 6853 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @05:57PM (#7831122)
    NOT safe for work...

    Hand-rolled cigars [lycos.co.uk] (MPG)
  • I'm more interested in the ads that won't be shown in other countries because they are too "racy", "religiously offensive", etc. It's always fascinating to see how another culture rules out elements that we think are normal. The other way around is not so surprising, since we all watch the TV here all the time, and we know what shows and what doesn't on our own tv's.

    Ultimately, I must agree that the "best" commercial is no commercial at all.

    • Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:4, Informative)

      by RatBastard ( 949 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:03PM (#7831158) Homepage
      I can't see anything advertised on American TV offending anyone else. Save for ads for pork products getting shown in Israel or iin Islamic countries, that orgasmic shampoo in those few spots in the world more uptight that the USA, those horrid infomercials with those insultingly sterotypical "Australian" hosts, or the plethora of ads that are just insulting to the intellegence of a demented bee. Other than that, America is hopelessly anal-retentive and whitebread. Hell, we bore ourselves to death!

      • Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by szmccauley ( 667273 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @08:25AM (#7834274)
        You want annoying? How about those ridiculous ads for prescription drugs, whose purpose is unknown at the time of the viewing. "Ask your doctor about Xanthanaxamum". And the idiot sitting in his pickup truck (can't see the gun rack) nods his head and thinks, "yeah, I gotta ask ole doc Carson about Xanthanaxamum". What the fuck is Xanthanaxamum!! Idiocy.

    • Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:14PM (#7831244)
      I made my first trip to States in September. I didn't have too much time to watch TV, but I kept it on when I was in my hotel room, and I noticed a few things about the commercials compared to Finnish ones.

      - Commercials every 5-7 minutes (and they lasted 5-7 minutes, too!)
      - LOTS of car commercials. And the arguments were not about fuel economy, environment, or safety, but how fast and impressive they were.

      The most absurd commercial I saw were clips advocating coal energy. The tagline was like "Electricity from coal: Cleaner, more
      affordable and abudantly better.".

      Also, regarding the article: I remember watching some sort of short documentary by Playboy a few years back, and they also covered commercials in Europe. I was quite fascinated when the narrator and commentaries were like "How can you even remember what they are advertising, this is hot stuff" - In a Rexona ad, two women get sweaty at the gym and afterwards go take a shower and use Rexona's soap. I don't think anyone in here would have considered that erotic or arousing, but apparently to American eyes it was like hard-core porn :)

      • Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @07:14PM (#7831653)
        The "Friends of Canadian Broadcasting" has a current TV ad campaign promoting home-grown drama television production. The spots are pretty funny and feed off the cliched ignorant-aboot-Canada American stereotype (in all four, a US director is in the great white north working on set on TV productions about Canada).

        Sir John A. Macdonald [friends.ca] (QuickTime 4.4MB):

        Richard the Rocket [friends.ca](QuickTime 4.2MB):

        Snow Gangsta [friends.ca] (QuickTime 4.2MB):

        Bobby Orr [friends.ca] (QuickTime 2.8MB):
    • In America, you see many ads saying brand A (ours) is better than brand B (our competitor's), and I think there's nothing wrong with that. FWIW, in Japan, you aren't alowed to mention your competitor by name and trash them, because doing so is considered undignified.
      • Actually nowdays in the US marketers are more into psychology than direct comparison. They phrase their ads so people read something into their statements which they aren't actually saying.

        They make statements like:

        'No other xxx is more effective'
        'No other xxx is stronger'
        'No other xxx is better at...'
        'Even xxx isn't better than...'

        But if you actually think about what they are saying with those statements, they are not saying that their own product is better than any other product.

        They are actually sayi
    • Television advertising in Australia and the UK is considerably racier than in the US, and I believe the same is true in continental Europe. In fact, when I go to the states I'm constantly amazed by how much money American companies blow on such lame ads.

      I'm from Australia, and the one thing that's extremely noticeable about US advertising is the huge numbers of drug commercials. Here in Australia, advertising perscription drugs is banned (though drug companies try to subvert the ban by funding ads that s

    • I'm more interested in the ads that won't be shown in other countries because they are too "racy", "religiously offensive", etc.

      Whereas I want to see the ones that aren't shown here because they're too racy, etc. Basically, I'm a perv.

    • The times I've seen US TV, it's so utterly - really quite *amazingly* - bland and inoffensive I would be surprised if anything coming out of the States (other than obvious stuff like ads for pork products in Muslim countries, etc.) got banned by anyone else. Not that ads in other countries are particularly racy in my experience either, mind you, but nudity in ads is pretty common in many European countries I suppose.

    • Re:What about ads you can only see here? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tie_guy_matt ( 176397 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @10:37PM (#7832644)
      America is the most religous country in the industrialized world based on the number of churches versus population and the number of people that attend them. I am sure that MOST people in the US would probably be ok with racier TV (see cable and movies) but when someone does something that is even a little over the top the religous right comes out and mails a gazillion letters.

      Keep in mind that many of the people that originally came to this country did it to escape religious persecution. So in other words many of the worlds religious nuts came to this country and are now sending letters in to fox because they said the word "ass" one too many times. Well things are changing alittle. I think it is actually ok to say "ass" on tv and in fact fox is thinking of changing their slogan so it has the word "ass" in it. So basically the US is 20-30 years (at least) behind the rest of the world when it comes to putting sex on TV.

      What I don't understand is that I believe that we are 10-20 years ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to putting violence on TV and movies.

      enter rant mode:

      I mean WTF? It is ok to have a movie where millions of people have their cuts spewed out of them in violent death scenes but god forbid if anyone could use the media to figure out where babies come from. Many years ago I saw in the video store that they made a PG version of the movie titanic. What made it PG? Did thousands of people not get sent to their horrifying death? No mostly they just took out the sex scenes. I mean no one should know that Kate Winslet is acutally anatomically correct. And another thing, why the hell do they put brail instruction on drive through ATMs? ... oops went to far better stop now ...

      rant mode off

  • kazaa (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pompatus ( 642396 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @05:58PM (#7831129) Journal
    Do a search on kazaa for banned commercials. It's too bad they are banned from tv because most are hilarious.

  • Doge Aries K Class (Score:4, Funny)

    by dildatron ( 611498 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @05:59PM (#7831131)
    Even though it's not a real commercial (used to be on AdCritic back when it was good), I loved the Dodge Aries K-Class car commercial. It was a hilarious spoof of car commercials...

    98 horsepower... standard.

    map light... standard.

    etc.
  • Production costs: $1.2 million
    2 minutes of network airtime: $2 million
    Mention on Slashdot: Priceless.

  • The solution to TV advertising (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jonah Hex ( 651948 ) <hexdotms&gmail,com> on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:01PM (#7831143) Homepage Journal
    Sick of seeing the same old ads on TV? Seems like every hockey game I see involves 5 minutes of ads, 3 minutes of which are repeats! Well I've got the solution!

    All advertising must be done live. No pre-taped commercials, ever. Even if it's the same script read by the same person there will be some difference. Now if a company spends a mil or two on a commercial it'll really mean something.

    Of course it'll never happen, but if it did I'd be alot happier with advertising.

    Jonah Hex
    • At the radio station I work at, we started using Live Copy for some commercials. What happens is when the commercial comes up, there's a little block of text, which you can use to make up an ad-lib commercial. We don't use it on most spots, but there are a few.

      Also, During the morning show, businesses pay to have a live commercial, where someone from the advertiser, which is usually a local store, calls and talks to the announcer. A lot of the time it doesn't even sound like a commercial.
    • In case you didn't know, that's how it was during the 40's and 50's. And back then, every show had a sponsor.

      (No, I wasn't alive back then.)

  • Call it a hunch... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:01PM (#7831144) Homepage
    Something tells me the second ad, "Gucci's G Spot," will be the one primarily responsible for the site's eventual Slashdotting.

  • I bet we'll never see an ad for this... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sevn ( 12012 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:01PM (#7831145) Homepage Journal
    *useful product. [dangpow.com]

    *credit goes to some person on fark a while ago.

  • What about TiVo? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot@NoSpaM.stango.org> on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:02PM (#7831149) Homepage Journal
    Why not break up a block of late-night "paid programming," and broadcast some of the more enticing ads within that time so TiVo can pick them up separately.

    Stick a line on the Now Showing screen labelled "Check out the ads THEY don't want you to see!" or something like that.

    If the ads are compelling enough to straddle the advertisement/entertainment line, people will watch. I watched those BMW commercials that ran in the same slot a while back-- didn't make me run out and buy one, but they were entertaining.

    ~Philly
  • Just why exactly would I want to watch even more ads?

  • This is wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:05PM (#7831166)
    Some ads made by world's leading advertising agencies for well-known brands will never be seen in the United States.

    So basically, the good ads aren't broadcast, and I have to Tivo-triple-fast-forward all the ones I *do* get on TV because they're such a tripe.

    Here's a suggestion for TV networks : instead of trying to sue DVR manufacturers because it lets customers skip your crap, why don't you replace the crap with good ads (and no, I'm not talking about Budweiser or Taco Bell ads)? Of course, you may have to leave good taste behind once in a while, but I bet good ads would being better brand recognition with less airtime, meaning less ads for viewers overall and less DVR zapping.
    • I always stop and watch the new IBM commercials.

      So yeah, if I see one, I rewind a bit and play it back. Then i tell my friends... this is hilarious... then we go back to skipping commercials.

    • Here's a suggestion for TV networks...

      Aside from the fact that the networks don't make the ads (apart from their promos), the only way shitty advertising will go away is when shitty advertising stops getting people to buy stuff. Why shoot for the moon, when barely getting off the ground seems to work pretty damn good?

    • Here's a suggestion for TV networks : instead of trying to sue DVR manufacturers because it lets customers skip your crap, why don't you replace the crap with good ads.

      Wait a cotton pick'n minute...

      Didn't someone suggest this with the MUSIC industry?? Didn't someone suggest this with the MOVIE industry??

      I'm not sure whether to scream because every damn industry is pulling the same old stunt ("We're crap? No, sue someone for trying to bypass/steal our lovely product") or to be afraid because it'll ne

    • Re:This is wrong (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 )
      Screw "good ads" which loosely translates to an amusing joke, pretty people/landscapes, and appeals to emotion.

      Show me some facts. Tell me why your product is better than your competitors. Show me a good price.

      I'm not holding my breath, a fact-based advertising model would kill so many popular brands and empower consumers it wouldn't even be funny.

    • Re:This is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

      by edo-01 ( 241933 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @09:26PM (#7832307)
      Here's a suggestion for TV networks : instead of trying to sue DVR manufacturers because it lets customers skip your crap, why don't you replace the crap with good ads (and no, I'm not talking about Budweiser or Taco Bell ads)? Of course, you may have to leave good taste behind once in a while, but I bet good ads would being better brand recognition with less airtime, meaning less ads for viewers overall and less DVR zapping.

      This and other posts I see all the time on Slashdot hit that most hit of nails sqaure on the head. The market (that'd be us) wants to be able to watch our shows when it suits us and skip the crappy commercials so we buy PVRs. The Industry responds by suing PVR manufacturers, putting the commercials IN the shows themselves and generally jamming it's fingers in it's ears and humming really loud. And yet these same people, so terrified of losing advertising viewers, when confronted with the evidence that there are many commercials that not only do consumers want to see, they actually want to download them and pass them around to each other - (ie, the same people who skip over crappy ads like the good ads so much they will happily spend their own time and resources to distibute them) - the industry responds by trying to shut down the websites that make this possible (remember what they did to the first incarnation of adcritic) and if they ever do decide to make them available online they do so in some crappy streaming format. It must be just me, but if I'd spent a million dollars to produce a spot so funny/compelling/whatever that ordinary people are going out of their way to see, I'd make damnned sure it was available on the net in every format possible, via webistes, bittorrent, kazaa and carrier pigeon.

      Faced with their markets avalanching away from their beloved business models to third party on-demand digital alternatives the various industries (RIAA, networks, advertisers et al) have made the decision that it's the consumer who is wrong and therefore the only solution is to re-apply their failed methodology with even more vigour only now with DRM, region encoding, lawsuits and "re-education" campaigns.

      Networks and advertisers should be partnering with PVR makers, not fighting them - every PVR should not only report back (anonymously) exactly how many people are watching what show, but what commercials they are skipping and which ones they are stopping to actually see. Let the advertiser's message live or die by the quality of that message; no-one watches your ad? Tough. Make a better one. (I'm talking to whoever made the current crappy "Intern" Dell commercials here)

      The networks also like to bleat on about trying to fund their shows from dropping advertising revenues. I worked on a show for years, and I can tell you that not only was money pissed against the wall, it was more often than not fed into high pressure hoses and blasted directly into the furnace. There's no way these shows actually cost these huge amounts to make. It's just from inefficiancies on set, all the way up to the top-heavy upper echelon parasites, vast amounts of production money is either wasted or siphoned off as "fees". If networks really are worried about the cost of producing these shows versus the amount of money they can recoup from selling advertising they could probably start by firing a few VPs, (for christ's sake, these people are simply content aggregators - how many "development execs" do they need to just buy shows from production companies and put em on the air?) and actually putting some damnned oversight into how their production budgets get spent.

  • Yeah, that's what I was thinking (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:07PM (#7831183) Homepage
    After watching the Simpsons and the 10 minutes of commercial I get from that and coming to slashdot to waste some time geeking out and seeing an ad for "OSDN personals [osdn.com]" (WTF, by the way...) I just got the feeling that I wasn't watching nearly enough commercials.

  • Ads (Score:3, Funny)

    by mrpuffypants ( 444598 ) * <`mrpuffypants' `at' `gmail.com'> on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:10PM (#7831208)
    Speaking of ads, my roommatte pointed out something funny about my TiVo:

    I got the tivo partly to skip ads, now I never have to watch them during the shows I record (thank GOD for the 30-sec backdoor)

    However, every week a new add will show up on the tivo main screen and I always watch those. He asked me why, if I hate ads so much, I watch the longer-form ads just because tivo wants me to see them.

    thats some Zen shit i tell ya....
  • Check this out (link) [news.com.au]
    in a Martini [mymartini.it] commercial is another you will not see in US, Britain or Australia. Quote from the article:

    In one of the commercials, Paltrow is seen rising apparently naked from a hotel bed shared by an equally unclothed male.

    "Pausing to put on only a shirt, she tiptoes downstairs, hoists herself over the bar and prepares Martinis on the rocks for herself and her bedmate."...But what distinguishes Paltrow from previous faces of the company is her very public, healthy living image.

    "Sh

  • The inspiration for Honda's "Cog" ad (Score:5, Informative)

    by elflet ( 570757 ) * <elflet&nextquestion,net> on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:14PM (#7831246)

    Honda's "Cog" ad is a direct homage to The Way Things Go [frif.com], a 30 minute film [yahoo.com] of an amazing kinetic art installation (here's a video clip [tcfilm.ch].)

    You have to see this at least once in your life -- it's the most amazing "Rube Goldberg" contraption you'll ever see.

  • I thought these were the ads [mediacarta.org] that the US won't see.

    In a totalitarian system, you aren't allowed to talk back to the government; in the capitalist system you can't talk back to the sponsor.

    --
    Simon

  • funny == good && good > bad (Score:5, Funny)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:16PM (#7831262) Journal
    Dear advertising execs:

    If you're going to put ads on the air, make them good and funny. And I don't mean ha-ha-shut-up funny, I mean really funny, maybe even piss-my-pants funny (but only the first ten times). I still won't buy your product, but you could at least entertain me.

    With much contempt,
    bersl2

  • That anti-drug ad... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vorpal22 ( 114901 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:20PM (#7831288) Homepage Journal
    ...is just about the most intelligence-insulting thing I've ever seen. I mean, really... the truth of the matter is that the majority of widely used drugs don't cause considerable brain damage, or at least brain damage on the level that is wreaked by say, alcohol abuse.

    I think it should be banned for sheer stupidity rather than for any sort of inappropriateness.
    • Brain damage is one thing, but life damage on the other hand is a whole other issue. I won't get into that, because I wouldn't want to insult your intelligence... New Zealand has never let reality get in the way of a good government sponsored propaganda advertising campaign.

  • one of the funniest... (Score:5, Funny)

    by quacking duck ( 607555 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:24PM (#7831322)
    Won't see this in the U.S., been trying to find a download of it since coming back from Australia but no luck. Goes something like this...

    Beautiful woman is sitting at a restaurant table. The waiter delivers her drink and says "take your top off for a chance to win $10000!"

    Woman: "You're joking!"

    Waiter: "No, really!"

    Woman: "Take my top off, that's all I need for a shot at $10000?"

    Waiter: "That's right."

    Woman has her already-skimpy top off in a flash. Cut back to the Waiter with a stunned expression.

    "I meant the top off your Diet Coke..."

    • Although the idea itself was a bit novel, and hadn't been done before that I could remember, here is where it falls over

      "take your top off for a chance to win $10000!"

      Most people, obviously including this girl, would take that statement as referring to their "clothing" top. She was silly enough to take it literally - which is the lameness in the ad.

      OTOH, if he had given her the drink and said "take the top off for a chance to win $100000!", it would have worked better because the "top" became ambiguou

      • if you like sexism... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Scudsucker ( 17617 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @09:09PM (#7832218) Homepage Journal
        ...look no farther than how American ads portray men and fathers. You mentioned role reversals, but the issue warrants more of a mention than that. Men and fathers are portrayed as helpless idiots, inferior parents and "humorously" subjected to violence.

        There's the add where the woman takes pictures of items so her brainless husband can find the items in the store, the Dodge minivan ad with the caption "gets more work done than most husbands", the candy bar ad where a squirrel chomps on a guys nuts, the (insurance?) ad where the guy doesn't care that he's spilled hot coffee on his crotch, and worst of all, the Progressive Insurance ad where a vindictive woman tortures her ex with a voodoo doll site - including taking a pair of wire cutters to his testicles.

        If women in this country were subjected to as much humiliation, or female genital mutilation was treated as a joke in a commercial, there would be blood in the streets and NOW would be storming these advertizing agencies with tanks.

      • $1,000,000?!? (Score:4, Funny)

        by tgd ( 2822 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @11:08PM (#7832766)
        I'd happily abandon my dignity for ten bucks.

  • Here is the entire archive [japander.com]

  • whoa (Score:3, Funny)

    by Digypro ( 560571 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:26PM (#7831338) Homepage
    How about this---
    John Smith's wildly popular U.K. beer spots by TBWA star well-known comedian Peter Kay as an overweight, useless parent who uses a sausage and a beer glass to illustrate the facts of life. Only a U.K. marketer would endorse such a loser as a brand spokesman
    Umm, hello?
    Dell Dude anyone?
  • It's nice to see Slashdot doing their part to ensure America still won't see these ads. Ah... I love the smell of slashdotting in the morning....

  • Becks Beer Ad (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mge ( 120046 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @06:44PM (#7831459) Homepage Journal
    one for the poms...
    Any truth to the story I've heard about a new Becks beer ad ? tagline (supposedly) goes
    you don't need to be Posh to swallow Becks

  • Japanderers (Score:3, Informative)

    by LuYu ( 519260 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @07:20PM (#7831686) Homepage Journal

    Japanese ads that will never air in the US [japander.com] (works in Xine).

  • Oh, mi dios! El Web site pobre va a ser /.'ed (Score:4, Funny)

    by SirDaShadow ( 603846 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @08:10PM (#7831908)
    Por supuesto, todavia esta vivo

  • They work fine in xine, too. (Score:4, Informative)

    by marnanel ( 98063 ) <slashdot AT marnanel DOT org> on Monday December 29, 2003 @08:50PM (#7832107) Homepage Journal

    The movies work fine in xine [sourceforge.net], too. I had to launch it from the command-line rather than the browser because of the weird protocol (what *is* mms, anyway?)

    Here are the commands you want, to save you digging around the page:

    xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/mrkippling- birth.asf
    xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/johnsmiths- babies.asf
    xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/carenz-skul l_gore.asf
    xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/sylvania-ro aches.asf
    and of course
    xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/honda-cog.a sf
    Remove the spaces Slashcode's put in the URLs, of course.

    (And there's only one P in "Mr. Kipling" [mrkipling.co.uk]...)

  • Hitler and Taiwan (Score:4, Funny)

    by That_Dan_Guy ( 589967 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:17AM (#7833012)
    When I was in Taiwan there was a German company selling heaters there and the add company they hired put Hitler on the sides of busses and billboards announcing this Heater from this company would Win the War on the Cold Front!

    It didn't take long for the German company to find out and fire the add company, but that is an add you won't see in America (and sure as heck not in Germany).

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