Eight American kids are killed or injured daily by unsecured guns in their homes. The Ad Council, creators of Smokey Bear and other iconic PSAs, launched the End Family Fire campaign to raise awareness. Read the rest

Apparently Facebook is running TV ads apologizing for being a creepy stalker optimized for organizing Nazi hate-mobs and genocidal pogroms (also apparently: now that all the young people are leaving Facebook, TV is how you reach the company's core user-base). Read the rest

"101 degrees in the shade..."

It's been hot in the Bay Area and I was joking with a friend that we should take the "Nestea Plunge." They had no idea what I was talking about which surprised me, given the iconic ad campaign ran from the 1970s through the 1990s (and came back in 2014).

I grew up on Cape Cod, so we didn't have a pool, we just went to the beach when it was hot. For hours, my friends and I would put our arms out and fall backwards into the Atlantic, trying to reenact the Plunge we saw on TV. It was like an in-water trust fall with only the waves to catch you.

Cripes, you all remember it, don't you? Surely it's just an anomaly that my friend didn't know about it.

"Temperature was up around 103..."

"The temperature was up around 111..."

"Come on, taste the taste of wetness..."

Even legendary groupie Pamela Des Barres took the Nestea Plunge

They're *still* taking the Plunge in the Philippines Read the rest

"Red Coke," aka Riunite on Ice, was largely inspired by the 1940s "Man, Oh Manischewitz" ads. Here, voiceover genius Bob Crane does several impressions for that Robitussin-adjacent wine beloved by middle-class boomers both Jewish and gentile. Read the rest

In 2016, Google banned ads for payday lenders; now it has followed up with a ban on another predatory industry: for-profit bail bondsmen, who rip off black people and poor people with deceptive financing terms that are designed to create a usurious cycle of permanent debt. (Image: Sarah Nichols/CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

I always loved Ferrero Rocher because of its wonderful television ads in Britain. To immigrants in America, writes Liana Aghajanian, the foil-wrapped chocolates are a status symbol.

Growing up in Culver City, California, in an apartment complex entirely occupied by Libyan-American families -- each of whom had their very own stash of Ferrero Rocher in serving bowls -- the chocolate was something Herwees says she associated with Libyan culture, because the only places she encountered it were her house, at Libyan-American weddings, or in Libya itself.

“I had this one auntie who always pulled out a Ferrero Rocher when I was there; I always knew she had Ferrero Rocher on hand,” she says. “She became one of my favorite aunties for this. I think I associated it with decadence -- even now when I have it, it feels like a really special thing.” The strong emotional response this particular chocolate induced in immigrant families was common. Their lives were caught up in war, violence, political turbulence, and socioeconomic inequality. As their worlds changed around them, Ferrero Rocher remained a constant, an accessible bridge to the past and present that has now become a nostalgic reminder of what life growing up in America was about for children of immigrants like me.

On the infamous UK ad (embedded above):

Its appeal, however, wasn’t as universal as it seemed, and perhaps nothing encapsulated the disdain for Ferrero Rocher better than the roaring reaction to the infamous commercial known as the “Ambassador’s Party,” which aired in the UK in 1993.

Unilever founder John Wanamaker famously said, "I know that half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. My only problem is that I don’t know which half." It's an odd testament to the power of advertising, an industry whose executives are incredibly effective at selling their services to other executives, even if they can't prove they're any good at selling their customers' products to the public. Read the rest

Facebook maintains a repository of success stories trumpeting the advertisers who have attained greatness by buying Facebook ads; most of these are businesses, but until recently, Facebook also trumpeted Florida Governor Rick Scott's use of Facebook ads to "boost Hispanic voter turnout in their candidate’s successful bid for a second term, resulting in a 22% increase in Hispanic support and the majority of the Cuban vote." Read the rest

The ROICHEN EASY TRAY "helps you to stock and pull out your clothes without making a mess" and is an instant classic in the annals of weird advertising. Read the rest

In 1993, AT&T ran a series of ads trumpeting the future of the internet, called "You Will." Read the rest

Artist Jenny Odell created the Bureau of Suspended Objects to photographically archive and researched the manufacturing origins of 200 objects found at a San Francisco city dump; last August, she prepared a special report for Oakland's Museum of Capitalism about the bizarre world of shitty "free" watches sold through Instagram influences and heavily promoted through bottom-feeding remnant ad-buys, uncovering a twilight zone of copypasted imagery and promotional materials livened with fake stories about mysterious founders and branded tales. Read the rest

Last year, Korean rules regulating abusive practices by online services went into effect, under terms set out in the "Amended Enforcement Decree of the Telecommunications Business Act Now Effective, Specifically Classifying and Regulating Certain Prohibited Acts of Telecom Service Providers." Read the rest

Probably the best cyberpunk anime ad for stout ale in the world. [via Tim Soret] Read the rest

Back in 2016, the EU passed the General Data Protection Regulation, a far-reaching set of rules to protect the personal information and privacy of Europeans that takes effect this coming May. Read the rest

Google has long maintained that it must keep the workings of its search and ad-placement algorithms a secret, lest they provide a roadmap to the kinds of bad actors who'd like tweak the results and give their bad ideas (or sleazy products) pride of placement on its pages. Read the rest

Knowing Microsoft's longtime sales chief Steve Ballmer, I thought I knew what to expect from this early ad starring him. But the sheer maniacal force of it means I've already had enough internet for the day, and it's not even 7 am. Read the rest

Some debate surrounds "The Jordache Look," a 1984 advertisement for the iconic brand's jeans. The proposition: that it is "the most 80s advert ever." If the presence of "ever" permits adverts from beyond the 80s to still be "80s," then I'm afraid there's no beating The Ambassador's Reception, shot by classy chocolatier Ferrero Rocher for screening in post-communist Eastern European markets, but so successful it ended up on British TV.

Read the rest