Tag Archives | Commercials

A Creepy Bank Advertisement Featuring Celebrity Athlete Spokespeople

By on April 24, 2013 in News 0

An eerie and fascinating commercial of the moment from European banking and mortgage giant Santander acknowledges how corporate messages have become a deluge pervading our lives. There is no resistance. Via Potlatch:

It is one of the most unsettling pieces of film that I’ve ever seen, reducing advertising to a set of blank and bland facts, to be recited out of the mouths of an apparently arbitrary collection of sports stars. What are the celebrities doing in other people’s houses?

The ordinary people, trying to go about their days in peace and privacy, exude a sad resignation that capitalism now drops (real? hallucinatory?) celebrities into their bathrooms and kitchens, to talk at them uninvited. Is this a warning of some kind?

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ExxonMobil Gets TV Stations To Pull “Exxon Hates Your Children” Ads

By on April 15, 2013 in News 0

Corporations seem to be all about irreverent ads, yet get surprisingly sensitive when the joke is on them. Via the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

In the wake of a major pipeline spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, Exxon has launched a campaign to prevent Little Rock television stations from running a political ad titled, “Exxon Hates Your Children.” To try to keep it off the air, Exxon is circulating a memo to television stations claiming that the commercial is “defamatory toward ExxonMobil’s employees.”

The ads, which were paid for through crowdfunding, were scheduled to run on local ABC, NBC, and Fox stations this week, but were taken off the schedule when the stations got the memo. In February, Exxon pulled the same stunt when Comcast was set to air the ad during the president’s State of the Union address.

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Coca-Cola’s Superbowl Commercial Is A Microcosm Of The Idea Of America

By on February 3, 2013 in News 18

If you want to understand our culture, watch our commercials. Via Salon, Michael Shaw writes:

With the West in an endless struggle in the Middle East not just for resources but mindshare, we see the Coke bottle — the symbol of globalization and American commercialism — sitting there in the hot sand, the object of desire for, first of all, a hapless Gulf prince/camel jockey. Resonating with [the looming] immigration debate, we then have a Hispanic desperado evoking the desert as if the province of thirsty Mexicans looking north.

It’s funny but not-so-funny when you consider that what America has to offer is, in fact, a mirage. What the ad people realize I’m sure is that, after more than a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of “quenching” — no matter how much you “put down” the Arabs and Islamists — couldn’t be more ironic.

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Global Mega-Bank Co-Opts Occupy Movement In New Ad Campaign

By on November 28, 2012 in News 5

The Denmark-based multinational Danske Bank is one of the world’s largest, with assets worth about $600 billion. Its new marketing campaign, fascinating in much the same fashion as a train wreck, is based around the slogans “Occupy” and “A New Normal”:

The strategy is intended to restore trust in the Bank and ensure that we live up to our new vision of being “Recognised as the most trusted financial partner.” In order to reach that objective, we must set new standards for banking operations.

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Soon Advertisements Will Involve Forced Interaction

By on September 10, 2012 in News 19

In the near future, television commercials will make you do things, such as throwing a pickle onto an imaginary hamburger, if you want to get back to your show. Via Electronista:

Sony recently filed a patent for a new method of ad delivery that would turn television commercials into “interactive networked video games.” The patent, uncovered by Game’N’Motion, details a number of interactive commercial possibilities built on the motion and voice technologies currently available in Sony’s PlayStation 3, PlayStation Move, and PS Eye devices.

… Read the rest

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Pro-Marijuana TV Advertisements Run In Colorado

By on May 11, 2012 in News 9

This coming fall, Colorado residents will vote on whether to legalize possession and cultivation of marijuana statewide, via the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act. The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is running a series of television ads urging legalization — their first spot, in honor of Mother’s Day, encourages young adults to let their parents know that they prefer pot:

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