Always Look on the Bright Side of Death
UK Ad Clearance Centre Inters Morbid Ad

It's macabre. It's distasteful. It's disrespectful. It's got cute little tombstone-shaped navigation buttons! It's burymeright.com, the new site that's so obsessed with the afterlife, it seems to have buried its business sense deep in cold, hard terra.

In a halloween-inspired appeal to Marilyn Mansonites and Edgar Allen Poseurs, the site, which enables the documentation of its users' preferred "memorial occasion" elements, launched with a "sombre procession" and "celebratory wake" at ye olde "Heaven's Departure Lounge," located somewhere in the misty isle of England. "By what mode of transport would you like to be taken to the ceremony?" asks the site in its sample form. The suggested response: "I'd like to ride on a scale model of the millennium falcon."

If the Edward Scissorhands-style and Star Wars allusions don't mock the solemnity of death enough, burymeright's banned TV ad terminates any doubt of the company's lack of tact. A coffin that's been split in two width-wise floats past on pallbearers' shoulders. Later, the sunglasses of a wake attendee drop and eyebrows rise in response to the body lying in silken pink splendor within an open casket. Subtitles reveal that we've just witnessed the memorials of a magician's assistant and a porn star. The UK's Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) is not pleased, according to The Register's report.

Sure, their "Go Your Own Way" tagline is campy, and sure, the ad tickles the ol' funny bone, but burymeright couldn't have it more wrong. Sadly, in a disjointed world where the word "community" refers to newsgroups and virtual rogue states rather than neighborhood block parties and church ice-cream socials, this burymeright business model could succeed, in theory anyway. People are becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of cyber communication and documentation as opposed to the tangible kind. Hell, some Australian couple just signed their marriage certificate digitally, according to the 6/6 E-Commerce Times story.

However, regardless of the fact that the website is a haphazardly organized, non-grammatical mess, the overall ‘make light of death' marketing mission crosses the line that the majority of people have drawn when it comes to this grave topic.

Besides, I don't need to document my posthumous preferences. All of my friends are already well aware of my wish to be buried in a bright orange Datsun 280 Z car.

Got Integrity?
Politicians Ain't Got Nothin' on PETA

The PETA preachers are back, and this time, they're churning up more bad press for the dairy and meat industries. Taking hints from mud-slinging political ads, the veg-heads continue to dis meat makers with billboard ads linking meat-eating to impotence. A woman wearing an American flag bikini clutches links of raw sausage. The accompanying copy reads, "I threw a party but the cattlemen couldn't come. Eating meat can cause impotence." The 6/6 Yahoo! News story notes that the ads have not fared well among cowpokes in cattle-country states like Texas, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Kansas and Montana.

If you think that flaccid ad is hard to beat, PETA has managed to top itself. Its new "Got Zits?" campaign could prove to be even more offensive than the group's short-lived "Got Beer" ads (see my coverage as featured on ChannelSeven.com ).

As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, PETA ad coordinator Bruce Friedrich, notes that the "Got Zits?" ad "was created to let teenagers know animal fat and protein, plus the strange hormones fed to cows these days, have been linked to greasy hair and zits, something feared more than failing grades." The Aussie paper also adds that, "The milk industry says there's no evidence that milk causes acne."

The PETA ad's scare tactics don't end there, though. The group's MilkSucks site contains dermatologists' claims that "the fat, animal protein, sugar, and hormones in milk [may] irritate the skin, causing break-outs." The site also suggests linking to NotMilk.com , a creation of anti-dairy man and wacky hunger striker, Robert Cohen. In addition to employing repulsive tales of pus-laden milk and cheese tagline-parodies like, "Behold the Power of Pus," Cohen advises young, impressionable visitors to the kids/ideas section to "pour their [lunchtime] milk on the floor," and proceed to decimate buildings with anti-milk graffiti messages.

Hey, I'm no milk-lovin' meat eater, but it seems to me that, yet again, PETA has completely demeaned the intellects of its current and potential sympathizers, not to mention diminished the integrity of the anti-milk issue. Rather than promote the positive aspects of dairy alternatives, like soy- and rice-based products, the dairy slanderers have resorted to zealous, intelligence-offending fear mongering....

This type of pander only serves to repulse me. In fact, just to counteract PETA's infuriating provocations, I might have to break down, gobble a half-pounder and top it off with a jumbo pus-enhanced milk shake!

Hot Dogs and Cat Fights
Advertisers Force Kids into Bloated Bondage

Sometimes it seems that simply watching ads for ooey-gooey brownies or piping-hot pizza will add an inch or two to one's thighs. Can TV ad viewing really make people fat? Of course not, but some nutrition advocates say that ads are a major contributing factor to the fat phenomenon among American kids.

National Public Radio's All Things Considered May 29 edition features a discussion of ads for junk foods that target the wee ones. In the report, Margo Wattan of the Independent Center for Science and the Public Interest claims that some advertisements encourage kids to overindulge in high-calorie, low-nutrition foods. She mentions a recent TV ad pushing Pizza Hut's "The Edge" crustless pizza. In it, she says, a boy "turns eating pizza into high drama," as he proclaims the virtues of the fast food delicacy to his classmates. "If ads didn't work to convince kids to eat these foods, advertisers wouldn't spend millions of dollars promoting these products," she comments.

A spokeswoman from the NYC Kid Marketing firm, The Gepetto Group retaliates: "If there shouldn't be pizza ads, I guess that the next logical conclusion is that there shouldn't be pizza."

There's little doubt that the creators of that Pizza Hut ad could have chosen a more responsible way to promote the greasy gut-buster otherwise known as "The Edge." In fact, perhaps advertisers who pitch kids could approach their projects more ethically all together. However, does this mean that advertisers should be the scapegoats of this multi-layered, American epidemic? Of course not! All they need to do is decommission that pesky little Pepsi girl and all will be forgiven.

But seriously, this all comes down to parents taking some responsibility for their children. Unfortunately, in most cases, the French fry doesn't fall far from the tree.

Tabletop Ad Slop
What's Next? Logo-Seared Steak Tartare?

We all know the feeling. The waitress has taken the dinner orders. The dialogue is lagging, and the food that would serve as the perfect excuse to cease chatting all together has yet to arrive. What better to alleviate that deafening silence than some sort of discussion stimuli? Perhaps a talk on local politics could provide inspiration. Or, maybe a newspaper or magazine from the nearby rack could be a conversation catalyst. No, silly: there's nothing better to fire up the ol' vocal chords than advertising, of course!

Under the guise of "saving cafe culture," two French entrepreneurs have founded Impact Diffusion, an independent firm that sells bistro tabletop ad space to third parties like OCB, makers of cigarette rolling paper, Virgin Cola and Swatch Group. According to the 6/2 Wall Street Journal piece, ad space is sold in 14-day slots and can be rented for as few as 10 tables. Placement within the entire network du tables costs about $125,000.

"Fewer and fewer people are going to cafes every year," comments one of the company's founders in the article, "and we want to make cafes more interesting places for people to visit."

Oh, that's funny. At first, I mistook these glorified coffee-shop capitalists for culture-diluting cash hounds, but apparently that was a misconception.

Who Needs Real Actors Anyway?
Cyber Scabs Cross the Virtual Picket Line

Not being a privileged Hollywood insider, I'm not too familiar with the unsaid rules and regulations governing Tinsel Town. It may sound naive, but is it such a travesty for an agency to hire a non-SAG (Screen Actors Guild) member to appear in a TV or radio commercial?

According to USA Today's 6/2 coverage , it must be. In response to the SAG strike, a multitude of marketers is hoping to make digitally manipulated "actors" into stars. Sega of America has hired San Francisco agency Access Communications to create a $135 million campaign featuring virtual "pitchwoman" Ulala (pronounced ooh-la-la). Mya is the new cyber-spokesperson for Motorola's voice-activated wireless Internet service. She first appeared in the company's 60-second Academy Awards spot in March. Even Ask Jeeves plans to replace human actors with animated thespians in its Ask.com ads.

As if creating pixelated pin-ups isn't ridiculous enough, in order to promote its G-Shock watches in Japan, Casio has stooped to new lows by combining computer-generated imagery with archival footage of Babe Ruth. "In the spot, the Bambino's bat shatters when he swings at a pitch from a Japanese pitcher wearing a G-Shock watch," notes the USA Today story.

Hey, these ad innovators could be on to something. Think of the benefits of employing digital actors: there's no need to pacify the whims of spoiled human spokespeople; brand-damage resulting from highly-strung tempers or embarrassing personality flaws will no longer require the PR panacea; and most significant, there's no danger of a Monica Lewinsky/Jennie Craig-like mishap ensuing.

That's all well and good; however, the last thing the world needs is more cyber girl-obsessed gamer-geeks out there. What ever happened to the good, ol' fashioned spokes-stick-figure, anyway?