Perhaps when you start using a dead dog whose inner body cavity has been used for drug smuggling purposes as your narrator, things have gone too far?

The outrage over this commercial in England just proves that killing off regular schmucks on TV elicits no reaction from people, but throw in a few cute little dogs and everyone will absolutely flip their shit.

via AdFreak

In an effort to get more curious, young, literate college students to pay for subscriptions to costly paper magazines, The Economist has launched a new ad campaign to target the demographic. It also appears that the age-old cliche of college students loving 'pizza' continues to hold true.

As David Griner from AdFreak points out, a lot of The Economist's advertising tends to go over our heads and make us feel like idiots for not 'getting it'. Take this older ad for example:

OK, I get that those are Monopoly hotels, and there are a lot of them, but really what are you trying to say with this?

But the new ads are a bit easier to understand in a 'Bachelor's degree-earning Snapple cap fact'-kind-of-way.

Each one emblazoned on a pizza box to be distributed in the institutions-of-higher-learning-riddled area of Philadelphia, contains a graphical representation of some slightly relevant world fact pertaining to pizza ingredients. (click for larger versions)

Stihl, the makers of manly tools like chainsaws, axes, and leaf blowers launched a new ad campaign recently which plays off the recent instability in the stock market and overall economy.

The theme is to paint Stihl products as a 'sharp investment' that will retain value over time, unlike your now worthless mutural funds investments and Lehman Brothers stock.

They took out full page ads in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today (Full size here).

Unfortunately, it seems like all the copywriters overlooked one little detail. It's what I like to call the 'Patrick Bateman' effect. The last time we've seen chainsaws and nailguns mixed with the world of investment banking was in the 2000 film American Psycho.

Kind of a grim comparison isn't it? ... Ouch:

Really?

I feel like we've talked about every potential trend story and this one was bound to happen next. First we were drinking more booze to cope with our crappy economy, then we were buying porn with our stimulus checks, now we're combating financial collapse with a little more protected sex?

BusinessSheet.com got this awesome quote from Ted Conley, the head of North American marketing for Durex:

"The category has traditionally been strong at times of economic downturn and we are getting anecdotal evidence that the same can be said for today. When you think about it, it makes sense that when money is tight, people stay in and make their own fun rather than going out and spending money."

Encouraging indoor promiscuity to counter the economy's ills, hells yeah, Ted! How's this for a new ad tagline? : "Condoms are factory tested to be 99.9% recession proof if used properly. Don't forget to leave room for the reservoir tip of liquidity!" (ba dum ching)

BusinessSheet: When The Economy Goes Down Something Else Goes Up: Condom Sales, October 22, 2008

Wide swaths of empty seats at Talladega. Acre upon acre of the same at Charlotte, NASCAR's spiritual home and the backyard of virtually all of the sport's teams. True, attendance has been off for much of the year and the second Charlotte race rarely sells out, but so many empty seats? Things are bleak. That bit of rocket science aside, that times are as tough as they are is especially troublesome to image-conscious NASCAR, which must absolutely crap its proverbial pants when it sees stories like this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or even this one.

For almost a decade, an unquestioning public has given NASCAR the freedom to bill itself as "America's fastest growing sport" -- never mind the obvious logical flaw that, according to NASCAR's own literature, the sport's fan base has remained relatively constant at 75 million for that same time period (and let's not even get into the contortions used to arrive at that undoubtedly impressive number). But, a financial meltdown of epic proportions that's crippling everybody -- Wall Street and Joe Six-Pack and, apparently, even Joe the Plumber -- just might be enough to bring some of NASCAR's own overheated rhetoric to its knees and force the sport to reconsider how it does business. 

Product placement in the entertainment industry is just one of those necessary evils these days. Most television budgets rely on a healthy dose of product integration to pay the bills. And in the past we've taken a look at the 10 Movies With The Worst Product Placement, but our interest was piqued again recently when New York Magazine shed some light on the ad sales train wreck over at Mad TV.

The show has been suffering from lagging ratings for years in their unending bid to compete with Saturday Night Live. But when Toyota became a major sponsor, their big idea was to remove the comedy and parody from the sketches and replace it with faked product appreciation.

The feature in NY Mag explains:

The deal they’d cut guaranteed four sketches for Toyota. Classic product placement, and if it kept them on the air, where was the harm? But then Blasucci started to get notes. Showing the Yaris wasn’t sufficient, said the rep from Madison Road. The characters must praise the car’s features: its roomy interior, its sleek lines. The writers pitched a spoof of a commercial, with a young couple making out in the Yaris, panting about its fuel efficiency. No, said Madison Road. Cut the parody bit. The skit should just feature the couple panting over the Yaris. They aired it.

Plus here's the obligatory accompanying video history of product placement:

Turns out that the members of the "Portuguese Equities Forum" rang the Opening Bell at the NYSE yesterday, but they still have their gigantic sign and flags up all over the place.

The sign however, sucks. If you look at the background of this giant thing you'll see the backdrop to the text is a picture of NYSE's front facade. Isn't that a little redundant, showing an actual size image of something that's 50 feet above it?

Say what you want about that obnoxious Ecopetrol sign they had up last time, but at least that giant iguana was cool looking.

Take a closer look at signs imitating life after the jump:

I can't understand how this new Pantene Pro-V ad from Brazil was designed for women. There's just something about it that screams "Hey males, look at me!" Can't put my finger on it.

I literally spent hours scouring this poster for some indication of what it was trying to say. After my careful research, I realized there is a little brown colored circle near her ear that says in Portuguese, "Make sure your hair is the second thing he looks at."

If the Brazilian ad company behind this advertised in the U.S., I think there would be plenty of dudes with ultra silky smooth hair.

AdFreak has the other spot in this highly effective series.

AdFreak: Pay attention to my rich and buttery locks, October 3, 2008

Here's what appears to be one of the first post-failure WaMu ads via ChangeOrder.

Smaller font text says:

WaMu has a bright new future, thanks to the stability of JPMorgan Chase (and their nearly trillion dollars in customer deposits). But Chase brings more than money to the party: together we have 14,300 ATMs and 5,400 branches nationwide, a quarter of a million employees, and the confidence of banking with over 100 million other customers. [learn more, vist our site blah, blah, blah]

Assuming this is real, does it quell anyone's doubts and fears about keeping their money in this bank?

Yeah, it's pretty cool that they are keeping the same font theme and can be cutsey about their new trillion-dollar-sugar-daddies, but does it get the real job done?

Does it stop you from looking at them as colossal failures who made a series of gambles on risky morgages?

At least they're learning from some of their old advertising mistakes.

Change Order: Don't Worry, We Have A Trillion Dollars Now via Gawker

Burger King has had a tough run recently due to dumb employees bathing in their sinks, the need to cut prices due to a consumer-led recession, and inexplicably running out of 'meet'.

I'm not sure I can really relate this to the bailout right now, but the message is clear. Ice cream men better watch the eff out! You've been warned.

I think this commercial could have went a lot further and elicited a much better reaction. Maybe a closing silhouette shot of Mr. Tastee (from Pete and Pete) hanging from a noose? That really would have sent a message that Burger King means business.

via AdFreak