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It isn’t all that hard to count the clichés in your standard Hollywood movie, but a New York-based ad agency has made it much, much easier for fans to do so. Why? To get people out to the movies, of course! Wait … what?!
In the Stuff Mom Never Told You episode on douching, Caroline and I discussed the advertising history of feminine hygiene products that revolved around scare tactics. In those early days, Lysol and Zonite pushed their wares as feminine hygiene products by convincing female consumers that if they didn’t douche, their husbands would lose sexual interest.
Even if you’re not a fan of the message, you have to hand it to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the ad firm behind the latest marketing “Got Milk?” marketing campaign: they’ve got a lot of people buzzing about milk. Granted, it’s an angry buzz, akin to a swarm of killer wasps. This time around, the California Milk Processor Board is urging men to bring home milk to soothe their female partner’s horrifying PMS symptoms.
And the Internet ain’t happy at the overtly sexist tone. There’s even an online petition to end the campaign. I could do without the lame marketing as well, but what I really want to know is: Does milk cure PMS? Is there some science among the sexism?
In short, yes. Women should already get around 1,000 to 1,200 milligrams of calcium daily to reduce their risk of osteoporosis, although medical experts disagree on just how much is appropriate.
If Molly and I ever run out of ideas for Stuff Mom Never Told You, I already have a Plan B ready to go: Stuff Mom Never Told You About Airline Advertising. While researching for the new episode on the history of flight attendants, we unearthed so many cringe-worthy tag lines and commercials, it wasn’t easy picking the best of the worst among them.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Kitty D’Alessio, advertising brain behind Maidenform’s iconic “I Dreamed…” campaign. By the time these ads debuted in the early ’60s, images of lingerie-clad w0men weren’t exactly scandalous. After all, sex had been selling products in American advertising since 1917.
The “Mad Men” character Don Draper is modeled after the ad men of yore, shining up even the dullest products to seductively woo the consumer’s attention. The show also focuses on the inherent sexism of the industry at the time, and women’s battles to have their ideas heard and recognized.
One real-life woman who accomplished just that is Kitty D’Alessio.
This video – which contains a Volkswagen ad – went up yesterday and already has over a million hits. It’s kind of a viral nirvana for any marketing department: Clearly there is something to be learned here: When needing to advertise a product, use a Star Wars theme with cute kid included. If you would [...]
It only takes a few episodes of Mad Men to understand that advertising is meant to elicit certain emotional responses from consumers. Don Draper excels at his job because he effectively infuses need and desire into products, no matter how frivolous. But toying with people’s consumer behavior has a more potent effect than driving them [...]
How QR Codes work -and- how to make your own QR code
by Marshall Brain | November 4, 2010
It is hard to miss all the QR codes that are proliferating in the urban wild at the moment. You see them everywhere, as shown here: To read the codes, all that you need is a smart phone with a QR code reader. Did you know that you can make your own QR codes for [...]
How Skywriting Works – putting words in the sky with a smoking plane
by Marshall Brain | October 20, 2010
There are two ways to do skywriting: The old-fashioned way looks like this and is called “free-style”: This page describes the time it takes for this type of skywriting, along with the visibility: Each five-letter word takes 10 minutes of carefully choreographed flying that typically includes 20 different precisely timed turns and 15 different bursts [...]
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