Remember how Wispa fans got Cadbury to relaunch the nostalgic chocolate bar? It seems like this behaviour now has an added dimension as some consumers demanded a product that doesn't actually exist.
A Star Wars-themed blanket was knocked up as a one-off for a joke, promoted as a spoof, and created enough credulous demand to make the jokers consider selling it for real. Total capitalist nerdgasm.
Shame on you if you didn’t suss that the infamous shark-surfing video was a viral ad. This is a nicely done debunk from Captain Disillusion who runs a stylish YouTube channel for youthful sceptics. You have to skim through a metaphorical antitheist fantasy drama first, but if kids believe that you can hook a giant shark without ending up uni-limbed, then they might also be taken in by stories about sky fairies too.
A tip of the hat to magician Paul Daniels and his missus Debbie McGee for spoofing themselves and the Beckhams seemingly just for the hell of it. Are they promoting a TV show? Who cares?
Here they are again in one of a series of four Heineken ads that ran in 2001.
I don't recall anyone skitting the awful follow-up to the Cadbury gorilla ad (trucks on a runway zzzzz), which may suggest a correlation between quality advertising and the urge to take the piss out of it.
This is Soccer AM's take (light-hearted TV show on Sky Sports every Saturday morning) on the Cadbury Eyebrows.
b3ta is doing another ad-related picture challenge: Advertising the Unusual - create advertisements for things which don't normally get advertised
This video has a desperately tenuous connection to the purpose of this blog, but I could stretch it by roping in the marketing machine behind Nigella and the fact that she's married to one of the giants of the British advertising industry.
That's the boring stuff out of the way - now enjoy England's poshest rose talking filthy like a fallen fishwife.
Beware the danger of glass containers with strange looking liquids. Many are cunningly designed to appeal to Standard White Housewives, especially Types 3-5, (those most commonly found in kitchens) whilst maintaining her domestic breeding unit.
To some, this sight is appealing.
Some ethnic stereotypes are heavily associated with overcrowded trains. Do not allow this to deceive you. Our spies inform us of the existence of a stable matter transference unit that allows ethnic stereotypes to travel several thousand miles in an instant. These people are not to be trifled with.
Useless Husband can be utilised if in Carry Object Mode.
This is not a bowl of vomit.
Other clues might include taxi driver saying “cor blimey guvna”, red buses and cheerful chimney sweeps. The invasion force is near.
This is the point of maximum danger. The combined breeding unit is in Feed Mode.
Useless Husband hears a noise. The Proximity Alert at the breeding unit’s domestic access point has been activated. This is the critical moment.
MAJOR FAILURE OF THE USELESS HUSBAND!
Ethnic Stereotypes have infiltrated the breeding unit’s territory!
Unprepared, the domestic breeding unit is surrounded by forces outnumbering them three to one!
Decency prevents the depiction of the resulting carnage.
The circle is complete. The four elements of the domestic breeding unit have been recycled.
Regulars will know how much I enjoy Adam Buxton’s TV and radio work. He has carved himself out a niche online too, and has just posted this Obama-inspired masterpiece.
I'll never learn - browsing b3ta during the lunchbreak is a risky business. One risks choking with laughter. Here's the daftest bit of editing you'll ever see, created by a b3ta regular.
I'm mortified that I had to look this one up, but "clunge" is one of the myriad of slang words referring to a woman's toilet bits. I hope the IT monkeys don't spot that search in their url log.
This emerged from another Private Eye article ripping into Sky News' lazy use of viewers' photos to enhance its website (ref: the glorious e-vandalism surrounding the Spring storms coverage).
So... here we go again. Here's another gallery of rogue images that Sky posted on its website, unaware of the photoshopped mischief. The theme this time: The London Marathon.
Beyond the minge
Fergal probably has a beard too
Tron
One foot in the grave
Yeah, we all had a bloody good laugh at today’s story about the Ali-G-speaking chav girl who ordered a “cab-innit?” and, instead of getting a taxi, received a cabinet the following morning.
Read through the story and it mentions furniture firm Displaysense. Dig deeper and you find the story on a free press release service, with a company biog helpfully supplied. Dig even deeper and you find the same company reported in the press earlier in the year as having been the victim of an unusual assault by a non-existent member of the public who was caught having sex with one of its mannequins.
Both stories are bullshit. The story is clearly a PR plant, and it’s a sad fact that the papers are passing it off as true.
Displaysense deserve some praise for the stunts, because its job is to shift furniture. We should be less forgiving of Her Majesty’s Press, which loves to get on its sanctimonious high horse about shagging CEOs, lying politicians, ranting mono-limbed celebrities, neglectful parents and declining standards in public life. Stories like this serve as a reminder that they just need to fill the required number of pages with newsprint to sell, and sod the truth.
If you think this is unlikely, then its happened before. Anyone remember stories about Paul Hucker? He’s the chap who insured himself against the grief of seeing the England footie team getting knocked out of the World Cup. This was picked up by virtually every newspaper and reported as fact. As revealed by Guardian journalist Nick Davies, it was PR from a insurance company.
This spoof of a current Volvic Water ad is nicely done. Its creator has taken bits of sound from the brand website and meshed it into the original. I didn't much like the original, which was rubbish, and made me wonder if the water contained traces of dinosaur poo.
Top marks to Auntie Beeb for getting into the spirit of things with this masterful trailer-come-ident for its iPlayer service.
The Observer newspaper - the often-wrong, Blairite Sunday version of the Guardian (beloved of the corduroy-wearing Crouch End crowd) - has some cracking advertising.
Anyone who has read the excellent expose of how the British media operates in Nick Davies' Flat Earth News will not be surprised at how those lazy sods at Sky News tried to fill space on their website by asking viewers to send in their photos following the recent storms that hit the UK. The BBC are guilty of this too.
Let rip the scamps with bad taste and Photoshop. Private Eye explains:
Examples:Another week, another victory for citizen journalism at Sky News… As storms battered Britain at the beginning of last week, presenters on the rolling news channel begged viewers to “help us put together the fullest national picture possible” by sending in their photos of the damage.
Hundreds took up the invitation – including posters on the Football 365 web forum, who, finding out that such pisspoor efforts as a shot of a watering can (“the wind blew it round all night”) were being featured on the Sky website at yourphotos.sky.com, rose to the challenge and began to send in increasingly outlandish scenes created using photoshop and snaps lifted mostly from the rival BBC website.
By 11.30am on Tuesday, despite a solemn promise that “your photo will be checked by moderators before it can be displayed”, the 408 photographs in Sky’s “Wild Weather” gallery included a shot of a young Norman Wisdom dismayed by a car crushed by a tree; footballer Carlos Valderama in flooded New Orleans captioned “it’s windy here in Widnes”; a still from environmental disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow captioned “Whitley Bay”; a suspicious number of scenes of destruction featuring either teddy bears or the athlete and television presenter Kris Akabusi; and several shots of fallen trees and flooded streets in which missing toddler Madeleine McCann was clearly visible in the background.
Sadly the fun was terminated after a mere 24 hours when moderators caught on and deleted all the images.
"I can't find me mate James Brown cos it's a bit windy here in Widnes"
"My mum's car this morning"
Norman Wisdom!
Kriss Akabusi surveys the damage
The endearingly angry copyranter featured one of the most annoyingly frequent road safety ads on his recent link haze. This gruesome work has been on the telly so often I wonder at the diminishing effectiveness of the campaign. Still, I crack an inappropriate smile at this evil mashup by one of those naughty denizens of the subversive b3ta.
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