Clever Print Ads from Around the Globe

October 20, 2006 10:29 PM

How Advertising Spoiled Meis a blog showcasing mainly magazine & billboard advertising from around the world, with pieces selected based on their inventiveness/cleverness. If you're offended by advertising, you might want to skip this post.
posted by jonson (34 comments total)

Nice find, jonson.
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:57 PM on October 20, 2006

Cute. Also, for us deprived North Americans, it's amusing to see the ads from other countries where you can swear, and admit you actually have sex, etc.
posted by blacklite at 11:01 PM on October 20, 2006

admit you actually have sex

indeed (VNSFW)
posted by UbuRoivas at 11:33 PM on October 20, 2006

... that beaver... did not have to happen.
posted by blacklite at 11:43 PM on October 20, 2006

I do not get this...
posted by delmoi at 11:56 PM on October 20, 2006

Good freaking lord, that page contains 606 images totaling 9118 KB, and about another megabyte or so of text and other crap for a total of 9962 KB. 10 frelling megabytes! And it has 31 inline video player applets from castpost.com. What kind of idiot puts that much crap on one page? I thought my poor Firefox was going to keel over and die, but it was eventually fine.

That aside it's an interesting topic. May I suggest instead the blog billboardom which focuses on outdoor ad campaigns and whose front page contains a mere 379 KB of junk to load?
posted by Rhomboid at 12:03 AM on October 21, 2006

now this is an ad..
posted by delmoi at 12:08 AM on October 21, 2006 [1 favorite]

delmoi, the first two comments to those ads are just comedy gold...
posted by markr at 1:06 AM on October 21, 2006

another "My Firefox" formation, what's the deal? Just say "Firefox" I mean who else's Firefox would you be talking about?
posted by delmoi at 1:09 AM on October 21, 2006

Wow, delmoi, the comments on that ad really underline the abyss between American & European views of birth control. Here in the US it's beyond unacceptable to make light of the unborn-- shit, that we even have an official term for a non-population like The Unborn says something very strange about us. File this under Uncomfortable Truths Revealed To Me Through Rubber Ads....
posted by maryh at 1:09 AM on October 21, 2006

another "My Firefox" formation, what's the deal?

He got into his car and went to the store. ⇨ He got into his Mazda and went to the store.

I woke up and put on my jeans. ⇨ I woke up and put on my Levis.

I thought my poor browser was going to keel over and die. ⇨ I thought my poor Firefox was going to keel over and die.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:31 AM on October 21, 2006

"I was watching my comedy central", "I was searching my Google", "I was surfing my internet", "I was playing my Starcraft" all sound strange, as does "my Firefox". You hardly ever hear that formulation with software. When people say their "browser" they mean their "copy of Firefox".

At least to me, anyway.
posted by delmoi at 2:08 AM on October 21, 2006

Folks, please keep linking to individual posts that you like. Unlike Rhomboid, my Firefox is not eventually fine. I've had to force quit twice now. What I've managed to see so far is great.

delmoi, Comedy Central and Google are external things that are accessed by users. Firefox or Starcraft are stand alone apps on a person's computer, which may indeed be individually corrupted or crippled by various things. Saying "my" may seem odd, but I don't think there's anything really wrong with it beyond aesthetics.
posted by brundlefly at 2:23 AM on October 21, 2006

wow, delmoi that was an ad. I can promise you this yesterday was the last day I shall be sticking my condoms in a kids face.. I mean.. it just aint right.
posted by econous at 3:31 AM on October 21, 2006

Oups. Damn words.
posted by econous at 3:39 AM on October 21, 2006

Wow, this one for AIDS awareness is really nightmare-inducing... which is the whole point. (NSFW, and it's the one with the man and the woman having sex with the huge insects, in case you didn't want to go back to wait for the page to load.)
posted by Zack_Replica at 3:43 AM on October 21, 2006

Very impressive site. It worked fine on the copy of Firefox installed on the pc in the room of the house that I pay rent for.
posted by 999 at 5:01 AM on October 21, 2006

Firefox is open source, right? So maybe Rhomboid wrote a special Rhomboid-enhanced version just so as to be able to use the personal possessive. That's my guess.

Anyway, I find this ad a little disturbing (it's the one titled 'Young idea!' for those who don't want to reload the whole page by clicking the link).
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:16 AM on October 21, 2006

This guy's gonna need to start selling ads since his bandwidth bill is going through the roof today.
posted by crunchland at 5:43 AM on October 21, 2006

Wow.

I was going to comment on a few of my faves, but as I kept scrolling, they got better and better. Bookmarked for later. Fantastic.

Oh, and as for this:
I thought my poor Firefox was going to keel over and die.

I thought my (DVD of) Point Break was scratched.
I thought my (copy of) Neuromancer was lost.
I thought my (mp3 of) Isobel had been deleted.

"My Acer is broken" works because ownership of things is commonplace. Media usually requires indication of an object. Software falls somewhere in between, but on the side of media, I'd say. ("My copy of Windows", etc)

on preview, what delmoi said.
posted by dreamsign at 6:27 AM on October 21, 2006

2nd thought: is software considered an uncountable?

Here are three (cartons of) milk.
Why did you buy two (copies of) Norton Antivirus?
posted by dreamsign at 6:29 AM on October 21, 2006

My Firefox does not equal your Firefox because mine has been altered from the default.

Therefore, what may work on your Firefox may not work on my Firefox.

This is opposed to saying: "This site will load on (all versions of) Firefox."

And very different from saying this won't load in my browser (Opera? Firefox? IE5? IE7?).

And I won't even mention using my Firefox on a USB drive to circumvent the Library's Firefox.
posted by ?! at 6:41 AM on October 21, 2006

I can't believe you just said that on my Metafilter.
posted by dreamsign at 6:45 AM on October 21, 2006

This sidebar linguistics discussion is ruining MY post!!*



*just kidding, I don't really care.
posted by jonson at 7:44 AM on October 21, 2006

Very interesting - makes abundantly clear the old advertising rule about the simplest ideas being the most effective (and clever), is true.
posted by stumcg at 8:43 AM on October 21, 2006

These are great.

Is there a reason why Americans cannot - or do not- create inventive or clever ads?
posted by wfc123 at 9:06 AM on October 21, 2006

I am highly offended by advertising, thanks for the warning.

Bill Hicks Lives.
posted by rougy at 11:37 AM on October 21, 2006

Great post. Some of these ads are really clever, but I think these are my favorite so far.
posted by kosher_jenny at 4:17 PM on October 21, 2006

I think we broke his blog with our browsers.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:17 PM on October 21, 2006

Interrobang said what I was trying to say. Firefox the sort of program that is highly customized, in that it has many options to tweak, toolbars to move around, and hundreds of extensions and themes to install. It would not be an exaggeration to say that many Firefox users have dozens and dozens of extensions active at any given time, and I can tell you based on first hand knowledge that the presence or absense of certain extensions can wildly affect the speed and memory consumption of the browser. Therefore I find it fitting to say "my Firefox crashed", with the implication that perhaps a stock (or less burdened) one might not. It's not like a Harry Potter DVD that's the same for everyone.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:59 PM on October 21, 2006

Rhomboid -- that doesn't change the nature of the word at all. Nobody is saying that the possessive can't apply, but rather that it needs a counter (copy of, version of, etc).

Anyway, still digging through the ads. Cool stuff.
posted by dreamsign at 4:34 AM on October 22, 2006

wfc123 - of course we can. However the FCC's idiotic rules and the mindless bleeting of millions of "what about the children" soccer moms prevent it.
posted by evilelvis at 5:36 AM on October 22, 2006

Interesting how a lot of those ads are from Singapore and Malaysia (due to his location I guess, I gather he's from India?) - which makes the sheer number of sex-related ads even more surprising given that Malaysia (and to an extent Singapore) are supremely conservative.

Also very disturbing was just how many of the ads were rather misogynistic. Women only existing for man's pleasure, rarely the other way around. Between all the animal rights and himan rights and safe drinking ads, they seem like such an odd addition.
posted by divabat at 8:07 AM on October 22, 2006

Also very disturbing was just how many of the ads were rather misogynistic

A product of the ad agency environment.
posted by Merlyn at 12:57 PM on October 23, 2006