Archive for October, 2007

Stories of Aids

Published at October 31, 2007 in Ad Orgies. 3 Comments

010 Stories of Aids


Far from the triviality of condoms adverts that carefully avoid the cock-blocking nature of the disease - and, in fine, their very raison d’être as a product; HIV-related PSA (Public Service Advertising) usually don’t shy away from embracing the topic in all its gravita.

Some even go explicit over the harsh reality that, if you get/give Aids, you will die/kill. And depict ellipses of lives where sex is deprived of sensuality and crammed with - sometimes intended - manslaughters.

Contrasting with this grim (accusing?) portrait of an irresistibly irresponsible world, but still as affecting as the more dramatic ones; some ads tried to bring some ethereal positivity to the table by focusing on a more noble statement: protect yourself, not out of fear of what can be lost (life), but out of joy for what should be cherished (love).

Out there, there are plenty of better ways to die.

MTV - Pistol (”Mature” content. Click on video/link to see)

Sidaction – The Human Hourglass

MTV – If Your Love is Boundless

Sidaction – Old Man

MTV – Can We Replace Women?

Love Life – No Action Without Protection (”Mature” content. Click on video/link to see)

Aides – The Meeting

Aides – Live Long Enough to Find The Right One (Woman) (”Mature” content. Click on video/link to see)

Aides – Live Long Enough to Find The Right One (Gay)

Aides – Explore, Just Protect Yourself (Boy)

Aides – Explore, Just Protect Yourself (Girl)

Global Warning

Published at October 15, 2007 in Ad Orgies. 1 Comment

009 Global Warning


For a topic as effervescent as environment (or as cynically hype as global warming), advertising has often had a knack for being trite, joyously bathing in clumsy complacency and suspicious attempts at playing the stifling moralising father figure, sometimes threatening, or sometimes purely desperate.

Rare are the slick acumens that dare to go beyond the simple fact enumeration and execute a tart creative pizzazz. And in an industry often taxed of being pure visual pollution, it’s probably irony in a nutshell that they, somehow, even managed to exist at all.

Greenpeace – Copy Machine
WWF – Global Warming

MTV Switch – The Rocket Brothers

Greenpeace - Breathe

DEFRA – Carbon Footprint

Solon – Hail | The Return of the Sun

Epuron – The Wind

Smirnoff - Sea

MTV Switch – 3650 Days

Human Snowballs | Katamari Damacy, Travelers

Published at October 8, 2007 in Ad Orgies. 0 Comments

Human Snowballs | Katamari Damacy, Travelers


Katamari Damacy is a unique videogame, an absurd aberration that emerged from Namco’s Keita Takahashi mind, an iconic litmus test that threw every game design rulebook out of the window; a game in which the player steered a sticky ball that increased in size as you rolled over items scattered around - may they be nails, pens, screaming cows, houses, which conferred the game with a rapturous knack for physical comedy.

Advertising was quick to embrace this circular logic. Travelers Insurance’s “Snowball” pictured a strikingly reminiscent phagocytising ball bouncing down San Francisco’s hills, while Médecins Sans Frontières’s “Human Ball” used it as a metaphor to depict the morose ineluctability of Aids’ impact on Africa.

Shameless rip-off? Flattering homage? The everlasting thinnest line of all prevails. Once again.

Katamari Damacy – Rolling Yoshida

Travelers Insurance - Snowball

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) – Human Ball