Advertising
WTF Wednesday: Mark’s Work Wearhouse is “Now Accepting Women”?
Ladies, rejoice! We’re now allowed inside Mark’s Work Wearhouse! In a recent rebranding effort, the Canadian Tire-owned retailer Mark’s Work Warehouse has changed its name to just “Mark’s”—oh, and they’ve also written one of the worst ad slogans we’ve seen in a while. Posters showing sophisticated, smiling women with the tagline, “Now Welcoming Women,” have… More »
Toronto Pride and sponsorship: what to make of the Bud Light stage
This weekend, queer folks and friends at Toronto Pride who reach for a Bud Light under the beer’s namesake music stage may be surprised to know what they’re drinking. Budweiser is just one brand sold by Anheuser-Busch, the American arm of Brazilian-Belgian multinational beer conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev. Just this May, Anheuser-Busch was targeted by Pulitzer… More »
The Hilarity of Evil?
A recent shampoo commercial for Turkish cosmetic company Biomen has been pulled following a flood of criticism. The commercial features archival footage of Adolph Hitler overdubbed in Turkish with audio exhorting male viewers to use a more masculine shampoo. It has sparked an online firestorm, and has been widely condemned by Turkey’s 20,000 strong Jewish… More »
Friday FTW: Vagina-product advertisement actually uses the word "vagina"
Whoever’s pulling the strings at one major tampon-maker has had it with euphemisms. It’s Kotex-ploitation! Finally, an ad about tampons spoofs stupid ad lingo—”down there,” “sanitary napkins,” “that time of the month”—and dares to actually say the word vagina (you know, where it goes) in a television commercial. The run-down: “How do I feel about… More »
Friday FTW: Indie progressive media survives and thrives as journalism biz teeters
Progressive media, it seems, is one of the very few bright spots in today’s bleak world of journalism. Despite the cash-strapped economy, rather than succumbing to the heavy hand of advertisers or clinging to sensationalized coverage—as their corporate counterparts have been obliged to do—independent progressive media has managed to survive and flourish by simply sticking… More »
"Bloom Box" promises cheap, clean energy. Too good to be true?
60 Minutes aired this report last night on Bloom Energy, a California company officially launching this week that says it has perfected a fuel-cell technology that is capable of making the conventional energy grid obsolete and producing clean(er), cheap(er) power. I get the strong whiff of bullshit off this whole story, and yet there’s something… More »
Body Politic #8: Big Pharma and public health insurance—too close for comfort
When was the last time you called Bayer or GlaxoSmithKline up for a chat about your prescription regime? Never, right? Doctors are our go-between, the ones who prescribe and manage our health, who pay attention to developments in pharmaceuticals, and we generally have to trust them to know what we need. While many provinces are… More »
Wednesday WTF: Vancouver librarians told to censor non-Olympic brand names
I was going to say that it looks like the Vancouver Public Library has drunk the Olympic Kool-Aid, but then, Kool-Aid maker Kraft Foods isn’t an Olympic sponsor, so in fact it must be some sort of Coca Cola product. But whatever it is, it’s inducing the crazy: VPL marketing and communications manager Jean Kavanagh… More »
Friday FTW: Greenpeace billboards show world leaders the future, and it's not pretty
Greenpeace predicts world leaders will be making a big apology in 11 years if they don’t step up at the Copenhagen climate summit next week. A new line of giant ads in the Copenhagen airport features Harper, Obama, and 6 other serious looking, digitally aged world leaders saying, “I’m sorry. We could have stopped catastrophic… More »
Wednesday WTF: Congratulations! You've won a criminal background check!
Virgin Mobile wants Canadians to join the hunt for the most fearless among us. Know what we fear? Massive privacy invasion! The contest involves posting a one minute video of yourself, doing something fearless, on YouTube. Skydiving or swimming with sharks are listed as prime examples of activities fearless Canadians partake in. On November 19th,… More »
