Manhattan Offender

Dr. Zizmor flies off the subway wall and on to your television.

1. He talks!
2. That same sad before and after lady!
3. Rainbows!
4. Hi-Def, yet the doctor is still fuzzy! From someone that is, like, actually his patient, I heard that he looks a bit older in the flesh. Maybe his big secret is to teach you how to stay blurry in the photos?
5. 0% financing if you qualify.  (YOU DON'T!)

Via The Awl

Maybe the most contextually accurate contextual ad ever?

Oh, and, yeah.  There's a new episode of my serialized screenplay, The Pride, up over at The Awl.

Followup - In the new liberal America, straight people will be the new gay people, having group orgies in the streets covered on the nightly news by the likes of Wolf Blitzer.

In the new liberal America, straight people will be the new gay people, having group orgies in the streets covered on the nightly news by the likes of Wolf Blitzer.

I just saw an ad for the below-linked company (a dating service for people that want to have extra-marital affairs).  On CNN.  At 10:30 on a Monday night.

The Ashley Madison Agency

According to signs at Macy's, Martha Stewart is 150 years old

Let's play Pyramid! McDonalds, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Citibank, Microsoft ...

Once upon a time, when working in the marketing department for one of the world's most popular brands there was an old advertising adage that could be heard from time to time: 

  More mediocre?  More money!

In other words, if your product is just par or even subpar, you need to put more money in the marketing of that product.  Why not put money instead into product development and create superior products?  People are stupid monkeys is why! 

Link: Microsoft Pays Seinfeld $10M to Push Vista - News and Analysis by PC Magazine.

You are not a very important person. You're either an idiot with a wad of cash or friends with Becky, over in Marketing.

This is a vague memory from over the weekend, but it just revisited my randomly firing synapses.  A friend of mine was describing something they did this weekend.  (It was a concert, and it was outdoors.  As mentioned above, the memory is a vague one.)

They were excited to be going.  It was an event that upon hearing the story, peaked my interest.  The fact that he was in the VIP section for this event peaked my envy.  The revelation that VIP was "all you can drink" peaked my peaking.

Then came the mitigating factor.

The VIP area had only available drink.  And that drink was Bud Light Lime.

Advertising apartments of the present in the format of the past

Just off of Madison Square Park the handwritten poster with its highlighter coloring looks at first glance as if it could be something of the pre-boom real estate market, advertising an Open House with multiple spaces available.  At closer glance though you'll see the prices of those spaces, bringing you right back to the present.  (Full size post-jump.)

Is it offensive because it's AIDS humor or is it offensive because it's insipid?

I tend to think I'm on the thick-skinned side.  So when my reaction to my morning email from Thrillist was offense, after the quick jolt of emotive response, I then stepped back to think about it for a moment. 

Thrillist is supposed to be the Daily Candy for straight guys.  They don't try to be "straight" like a Details reader, but more in a meat-and-potatoes, stock analyst, priority seating at Scores type of way.  The writing on their daily messages tends to be a tad on the fratboy side, but it's typically tolerable as they'll point out the occasional shop, restaurant, product or website of note and are on occasion dead-on in finding quality items out of the scope of the gay ghetto of most media.

Today's message (full version of it post-jump) promoted a website that purports to present advertising in it's most pure form, sans "softness".  Pretty much the site presents basic products, breaks them down elementally, and throws in what may be manatee-generated curse words.  It does this over and over again and seems to see itself as quite "bad-ass", but then pussies out at the end with the disclaimer:  'All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective parties."

All of this is done under the banner of AIDSvertising.  Now, the name is supposed to shock you and perhaps convince you that they are no-holds-barred.  At first, the name did set me back a moment.  There's been this turn where AIDS is no longer seen as a killer but more as an inconvenience.  It is this change in perception that has allowed AIDS to enter be dragged into the humor arena.  (Family Guy used it as far back as 2005 (Warning:  SOUND).)  People are still dying though and there is no "cure".  This is not to say that it is sacrosanct and cannot be used in humor.

The problem here wasn't one of offense.  And the problem isn't the humor's churlish and insipid repetitiveness.  My problem with the site after thinking about it is the hypocrisy.  The writers are claiming to be bad-asses:  we're going to throw out shocking words and shock you.  When you look deeper into AIDSvertising though you'll note that the authors are all anonymous.  Digging further into the "who is" report for the site reveals nothing more than it's use of godaddy, that extra-lame provider.  So, like the page-bottom trademark disclaimer, it turns out the bad-asses are actually pussies.

Anonymity when applied to shock humor erases all of the impact.  So the use of AIDS in your name and using the word "cunt" in your faux advertisements is reduced from shock to schlock. 

As for Thrillist?  If this is the best their writers could come up with for a Monday morning, it's obviously not a site for me.  I've unsubscribed.

The store is disinteresting until 2010?

The ad inserts in the Times never seem to pique my interest.  Following are the headlines from today's advertisements:

• Print for less!
• Chick it out:  Easter is March 23!
• Pak a pak:  Vitapaks - Another simply healthy idea from GNC!
• $99 Eyeglasses or RX sunglasses
• Celebrate Lobsterfest
• Everyone knows an Oreck traps 99.9% of microbes.  But then what?
• Turn your 1040 into Sony HD.
• Free Fisher-Price toy
• Score hot deals at your nearby RadioShack!
• 40% off entire stock baskets
• We'll get you ready to roll!
• Storewide:  No interest until 2010