If Mad Men has taught us anything, it’s that advertising takes a lot of booze, cigarettes and whoring-around. So, it doesn’t surprise us that–when particularly cutting edge or risky–it takes some serious animal research, too.
Just for the record, we think there’s always room for red Jell-O with lady Capuchin genitals.
You ever notice how marketers get hooked on words or spellings? Like how everything got a “2000” after it in the ’90s to make it sound futuristic? Or anything beginning with “ex” was spelled with an “X” to remind you of snowboarders skydiving into a live volcano?
If Lever 2000, which is just f##king soap, and the X-wife that took one of your testicles in your divorce taught you anything, it’s that Madison Avenue is lined with useless professionals. By “useless professional,” I mean someone who wears a tie to an office where they produce nothing but email and post-lunch dumps.
This group, more than any, causes me to look at the English language and evaluate which words have been abused and twisted to the point that they no longer have meaning. I’ve termed this, “cleaning out the language gutters,” in the same spirit that Brazilians used to burn street orphans to “end poverty.”
(I may not actually solve problems with the English language, but at least I won’t have to look at the word anymore and think, “Why? Why didn’t I do something?!”)
This week, I’m looking at the latest word to have been chewed up by some undergrad yuppie and spit into our living rooms: decadence. Continue reading Take it from Snee: Decadence is the problem
We all like booze. It makes the world go round. It goes yum-yum in my tummy. It even has hilarious ads (for reference purposes, see Patton Oswald’s rant regarding Dewars). Of course, there are times when sometimes, the ads are just offensive. This is not one of those times.
Swedish vodka maker Absolut has come up with a new ad depicting a “what if?” scenario involving what the United States of America had the U.S. lost the Mexican-American War of 1848. Apparently, this is ruffling a few feathers. Who would’ve guessed? I certainly wouldn’t have. In leaps of logics similar to people decrying Guitar Hero 3 for facing against the devil, some American citizens, even a forum of news channel, are calling for boycotts of the brand. Apparently, ads are funny until they’re not pro-United States. And even if those ads are in other countries, we should still have a say in them. How dare they!
Calm down and stop getting so worked up over this, people. It’s just an ad. Absolut was simply targeting the appeal to a specific country. That’s it. No harm, no foul. Besides, what else kind of vodka are you actually going to drink? Aristocrat? Smirnoff? The bathtub gin special?
(Courtesy of Adrienne S.)
