(no subject)

[noahgibbs]

Initial defensive disclaimer: hey, I am getting stuff done today. I am!

Okay, with that out of the way.

I collect stories of advertising that's just A Bad Idea (tm). My favorite involves Arby's and the slogan "Arby's Macht Fries", which either doesn't mean much to you or immediately convinces you that they should never, never have put that on a billboard.

Recently Cadbury made a new addition to its "too good to share" line of commercials. Specifically, one in India. Specifically, one about the province of Kashmir, which has been fought over by India and Pakistan for a very long time. The Indians (and presumably the Pakistanis, but the ad was run in India) were absolutely livid.

Comments

[safya.livejournal.com]

wow. my reaction to both of those keeps vacillating from "that's hilarious" to "that's really offensive" to "i can't believe those slogans were actually used in actual advertising" and really it just won't settle in one place, so that alone gets lots of points in my book. but wow.

[bk2w.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll ask. What's the offensive connotation in the Arby's ad that I'm missing?

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Look up the phrase "arbeit macht frei" on Google.

[bk2w.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow.

um...uh...wow

[miss-mimsy.livejournal.com]

The Arby's one still take the cake, but Cadbury...wow. I may have to boycott the eggs next year.

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

As I see it, the headline

Cadbury apologizes for advertisement comparing Kashmir to chocolate

did far more justice to the Cadbury ad scandal then the factual description.

Note: I have finally found a use for livejournal's "multiple user image" capabilities. From now on I will restrict myself to using the bottle of vodka pic to occassions where I am posting while drunk. It should give a fairly reasonable indication of what to read in the post following the picture.

The other picture indicates that I am posting immediately after peeing into a coffee mug.

Arby's

[treys.livejournal.com]

I Googled on "Arby's macht fries" and it appears to have been posted by WTO protesters
last year at George Washington University. Which makes *much* more sense.

http://thingsihate.org/view/300

Re: Arby's

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

At the risk of this sounding exactly like an urban legend, a friend-of-a-friend claims to have seen it on a billboard.

Then again, as defacements of Microsoft billboards prove, that's not a guarantee the actual company put it up.

Re: Arby's

[skamille.livejournal.com]

If it *was* used by WTO protesters, it was awfully clever.
Used by Arby's it just seems clueless.