Friday

Man boobs


















If you drink like a man, you might end up looking like...a clown? As you can see here, it really depends on your taste in makeup. The good news is drinkers usually stick together. So if you drink like a man and look like a man, you'll probably have no problem finding an intoxicated man who won't mind bringing home a chick that looks like a man...or maybe even a clown if you're really lucky.

Monday

That's some tasty oil

Word plays can be misleading. In this case, 16 million gallons of oil were "consumed" to make plastic bottles. Ultimately, this ad claims when you're drinking bottled water, you're actually drinking oil. Even though this is a huge stretch of the imagination, don't confuse this message with Dasani water which only tastes like crude oil.

Tuesday

Missing Links

Did you know smoking causes your friends to grow sausage-link arms?
Well, it does...according to the latest campaign from the New Mexico Department of Health. To confuse consumers even more, they've also created a website. This is about as close to "false advertising" as you can get in this business. Well done guys.



The real lesson learned here is if you smoke too much while creating an advertisement, bad things really do happen. And clients have to pay for them.

Friday

Ratting Out NYC

Washington DC recently launched a campaign claiming that NYC has rats the size of house cats because they aren't strict about food and drinks in the subway. New York subway tunnels might have a lot of rats, but I've never heard of anyone say they've seen a rat inside an actual subway car (or even seen a rat the size of a house cat). I would imagine food on the subways is a small contributor to the rat problem. That's an awfully slippery slope DC.

Wednesday

A True Scarevertising Agency

Want to create your own scary campaign? I found this agency called Scare Factory Advertising. Honestly I don't know what they actually do for sure, but it made me laugh and seemed to fit in with this blog. I'm definitely not recommending them by any means.

Saturday

Foul Uni-Ball

Uni-Ball...just the name makes me laugh. Here's probably the first ever scarevertisement for ballpoint pens. Apparently Uni-ball is trying to bring back the identity theft craze that was popular with banks awhile back. I think they missed the train by a few years.

Friday

A Scary Coincidence

Who knew smoking was worse than the biggest terrorist attack of all time? Apparently, a few different anti-smoking groups who released the same exact campaign six months apart. I imagine advertisers will continue leveraging this terrible tragedy in years to come. We'll probably be seeing a lot more twin tower visuals just like this one. Scaring people in an original way must be a tough job. There's only so many iconic tragedies you can use to your advantage.































What about the Nazi's? Surely there's an anti-smoking campaign in there somewhere.

Tuesday

Dirt Napping

Land Transport New Zealand and the NZ Police remind locals that you shouldn't drive while sleeping, nor operate a motorized bed, or something to that extent. When people say "I want to die in my sleep", I don't think this is what they have in mind. Though these ads are hard to take too seriously (because they are pretty funny), they certainly got my attention. In fact, this could be one of my favorite scarevertising campaigns of the year. I just hope I don't have any nightmares tonight that begin with my bed cruising top-down on a beautiful open New Zealand highway.




































The people who brought us Lord of the Rings and Flight of the Conchords have raised the bar once again.

Wednesday

Creatures of a Bad Habit

There's been a surplus of anti-smokeless tobacco ads lately. Though they always come up with interesting tactics to scare kids, the facts don't always add up. One ad says "Chewing tobacco has three times the nicotine of cigarettes. And will kill you just as dead." Not that I support chewing tobacco, but I do know that nicotine is possibly the most harmless chemical found in cigarettes. It's really all the other chemicals that kill. Nicotine is highly addictive, but essentially harmless to tobacco users. We don't get any other statistics to back up their "kill you just as dead" statement, besides the fact all degrees of "dead" are basically the same.













A slightly more effective ad could be "Chewing tobacco has a million times the nicotine of a hand grenade. And will kill you just as dead." Chew on that.

Thursday

Crash of '08

MADD drops another depressing graduation campaign on the class of '08, hoping to keep high school kids out of their parent's liquor cabinet. The line says, "Don't make it a grad to forget." Come to think of it, I don't really remember my graduation and there were no car accidents involved. It was actually a great time so I'd have to disagree with that tagline.













By the way, she proably shouldn't be driving while holding roses and a diploma.