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Which FBI public service announcement is the most worthless? YOU decide!

The X-Files
The only feds I’ll ever love…
 
Listen people, you probably know me well enough by now to realize that I’m no austerity hawk! I’m as red (not to be confused with “red state,” I mean commie) as they come, and I say tax the rich like they deserve it (they do), and spend all their money on comprehensive social programs, beautiful, harmonious infrastructure, and an efficient, innovative public sector! I’m just saying that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not the best example of a that ideal infrastructure, that’s all!

So when Paul Ryan’s latest baby, The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, promised not only to avoid $700 million in FBI budget cuts in 2014 (the FBI’s budget request for 2013 was $8.2 billion), but also, to increase FBI funding… well, I have to wonder what they’re spending it on. And before you say, “OMG, Amber! They’re spending it on super-secret important spy stuff they’re using to keep the free world safe from terrorism,” let’s take a little look at the public face of the FBI.

I’m not sure how much these FBI public service announcements cost, but I guarantee it is too damn much, so let’s play a little game! Let’s watch my top three picks from the FBI YouTube channel (all of which are made in conjunction with private industry), and we’ll let the readers of Dangerous Minds pick which one is the worst! The FBI is obviously Internet-savvy, so I’m sure they’ll appreciate the feedback and re-tool their YouTube presence accordingly!

So what will it be? The evils of counterfeit fashion (as if name-brand stuff isn’t made in sweatshops, too)? The evils of illegal downloading, which is just “not cool”? Or “cyber-bullying,” because apparently it’s cool if kids are harassed, as long as it’s not online? Cast your vote now!
 

 

 

Posted by Amber Frost
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12.18.2013
11:38 am
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The Bonzo Doo-Dah ‘Mad Man’: The selected adverts of Vivian Stanshall
12.16.2013
05:14 pm
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In those later days when Bonzo Dog Band frontman Vivian Stanshall was short of a bark, a pen, a duck, or a round, he would offer his more-than-capable services to advertising companies, suggesting delightfully creative, entertaining and memorable ads, which he would script, voice and occasionally appear in. The results were usually pleasing, though I have to admit sometimes feeling an occasional disquiet over the reworking of a favorite Bonzo/Stanshall song, which often neared musical heresy. But then I’d think, why be a grinch, and really shouldn’t the ginger genius make some well-deserved money from his past work?

And Vivian certainly did make money from these adverts, some of which (the pay for his Ruddles ad, for example) he put towards recording new songs—the inspiration being Orson Welles, who paid for his movies through ads for cheap wine and frozen peas.

Some ads, like the those by film director Tony Kaye, immediately become works of art, and certainly Stanshall’s best commercials deserve to be considered so—his ad for Ruddles beer, for example, is a work of genuine brilliance. It was inspired by Sir Henry at Rawlinson End and features a disguised Dawn French as Sir Henry, and Stanshall as narrator who recites the following poem:

Malcolm the Porcupine went to see if a moon of green cheese would float

He exhaled a spray of ‘will you go away’

To the land where the hoppity oats

He brewed humpty of Ruddles

Which he dumpty in puddles

And licked up whenever it snowed

In final conclusion, ‘twas only illusion,

Malcolm Porcupine said ‘I’LL BE BLOWED’




Commencing his doodles

With oodles of noodles

From soup of a green green hue
,
Sir Cuthbert first faltered
,
Nonplussed, altered
,
Then called for his favourite brew



Rolling an eyeball for kicks

Is somewhere between and betwixt

But feared overbite

Or the gift of hindsight

But not a patch on a Ruddles at six

In some respects making adverts was an ideal earner for Stanshall, as his alcoholism had wreaked havoc with his health, and limited his ability to remain focused and reliable—he wasn’t exactly “reliable” on the Ruddles shoot, either, but the ad agency were so keen on working with the great man that they indulged his occasional lapses.

Stanshall’s other ads usually reworked his songs to differing comic effect—the excellent ”Terry Keeps His Cips On” for Toshiba, and everyone’s favorite “Mister Slater’s Parrot” for Cadbury’s Cream Egg. Though it was Stanshall’s collaboration with Supermarionation genius, Gerry Anderson, the man behind Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds, which used the song “The Big Shot” for Tennent’s Pilsner that captured something of the old Bonzo zaniness.
 

Ruddles Real Ale: ‘Are you ready for a Ruddles?’
 
More Vivian Stanshall ads after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.16.2013
05:14 pm
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Our Geico ads are funny, but they’ve got NOTHING on these wicked Scottish softdrink ads!
12.12.2013
03:17 pm
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If Scottish people are as puritanical and prudish as Craig Ferguson claims, then we Americans are far worse. Or at least the Americans who make sure our television commercials aren’t too scandalous. Scotland’s iconic IRN BRU commercials are notoriously funny and controversial, and most of them could never, ever be aired in the U.S. Promoting a soft drink by featuring middle-aged people caught in mid-orgy? A MILF in a push-up bra being gawked at by teen-aged boys? Heaven forbid! 

 
Below, a particularly good 2012 IRN BRU ad, “Steamy Windows”:

 
A collection of some of the best IRN BRU commercials. Note to US readers: “Fanny” has a different meaning to folks in the UK—a meaning you’ll probably be able to hazard a good guess at…)

 
Can’t get enough? There’s even more.

Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
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12.12.2013
03:17 pm
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Parisian subway etiquette guide is a French New Wave period piece
12.11.2013
04:26 pm
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Subway etiquette
 
In New York, subway etiquette is primarily informed by human instinct and enforced with corrective glaring. It’s not the best system, since the self-absorbed, mentally ill, and tragically oblivious are often immune to the expectations of the world outside their own noggins and earbuds. France, however, is leaving nothing to chance, and keeping patrons informed, with style.

The pictures you see here are a from a book of subway etiquette created by the Paris transport authority. The manual contains twelve rules, all of which fall into one of the four “pillars of civility.” (You can see/read the whole thing here.)

Like French film, the manual is attractive, but it doesn’t patronize your intelligence. Unlike French film, it will be completely ignored by pretentious assholes.
 
Subway etiquette
 
Subway etiquette
 
Subway etiquette
 
Subway etiquette
 
Via Gothamist

Posted by Amber Frost
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12.11.2013
04:26 pm
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Ingmar Bergman’s soap commercials
12.09.2013
05:28 pm
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Ingmar Bergman for Bris
 
In 1951 the Swedish film industry went on strike to protest high taxes in the entertainment sector, and Ingmar Bergman, who at 33 had already directed a handful of movies and had also overseen the Gothenburg city theater for three years, signed on to do a series of commercials for Bris soap, in part to support his already teeming brood (two ex-wives and five children, with a sixth on the way). The commercials are playful, fascinating, and utterly Bergmanesque—in the best possible way.
 
Ingmar Bergman for Bris
 
What I don’t mean by “Bergmanesque” is that they’re brooding or depressing or austere—as Bergman’s popular image would dictate. No, they are loose and original and supremely confident in the form of cinema. Bergman has had the misfortune to be identified with a couple of not overly representative movies—Persona (1966) and above all, The Seventh Seal (1957)—and his true nature as a restless and protean prober of human nature somehow got a little lost in the mix. Bergman was nothing if not a relentlessly theatrical director, and few were more confident in exploring the limits of narrative in the medium. The parodies don’t quite suffice to encapsulate the director of the masterpieces Fanny and Alexander or Scenes from a Marriage.

Dana Stevens of Slate does a good job of pointing out some of Bergman’s trademark tropes in the video at the bottom of this page. She helpfully notes that the only limitation imposed on Bergman by the soap company was that one of two clunky phrases about soap and bacteria had to be included at some point. There are eight of the Bris commercials, they are all black-and-white, and the visual quality leaves something to be desired by the standards of 2013, but to Bergman’s credit, they are all wildly different and memorable and convey some succinct point about the nature of cinema as well as delivering the promised virtues of the soap.
 
Ingmar Bergman for Bris
 
One of the advertisements makes fun of the 3-D trend that Bergman had elsewhere disparaged; one of them is essentially a rebus (and is, apparently, so titled), which presents the same lengthy mix of images twice in succession; two of them feature an unmistakable battle between “good” Bris and “evil” bakterier, or bacteria (the first of those is certainly reminiscent of The Seventh Seal, as Stevens points out). Two of them feature characters from the distant, courtly past dressed in foppish wigs and ... giving off the general visual appearance of hankering after a snootful of snuff, or the like. One of the ads is “meta” insofar as we see a spokeswoman tout the soap’s advantages reflected in a camera lens, after which director and actress engage in a lengthy bit of what is apparently romantic dialogue. There’s a vitality of editing and montage here; a few of the ads use Georges Meliès-type effects, and the phrase “magic lantern show,” already strongly associated with Bergman (his autobiography, for instance), may waft into your head at various junctures.

To a surprising extent, the commercials showcase “Bergman in microcosm,” if such a thing is even thinkable, and they also may have provided a necessary experimental interlude just four scant years before his breakthrough, Smiles of a Summer Night, made him an international superstar.

Viewers will also learn that the traditional Swedish way of signaling the end of a narrative—“The End”—is, amusingly, “Slut.”
 
Ingmar Bergman for Bris
 
“Jabón Bris 1”

 
After the jump, seven more of Bergman’s delightful Bris commercials as well as an informative video by Slate’s Dana Stevens…..

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
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12.09.2013
05:28 pm
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Racist TV commercial is really… racist!
12.03.2013
10:46 am
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Hard to believe shit like this is still being made. I mean, what the hell were they thinking?!

Meet “Mr. Wong Fong Shu” aka Jim DeBerry of Definitive Television. He’s shilling for Alabama-based law firm McCutcheon & Hamner. Presumably they approved this. And paid for it!


 
Nope, you’re just a straight-up asshole, buddy! The entire Internet thinks you’re a cretin. That’s marketing! Not good marketing, mind you, but marketing nonetheless.

HOW could this be any more racist??? (Please don’t answer that!).

Best of all have to be the YouTube comments. Of course this jackass couldn’t help himself and jumped into the fray. He seems to be as preposterously clueless as you might imagine. He also thinks all this attention will be good for his livelihood… in some alternate universe maybe, but not in this one, pal.

UPDATE: McCutcheon & Hamner released this statement to Above the Law

For the past two weeks, we have worked diligently to determine the source of this video. Within hours of first being notified of the commercials existence, we traced the producer to Definitive Television and its owner Jim DeBerry. We insisted that the video be removed and that he disclose the party that allowed my partner and I to be portrayed in such a negative and misleading light. After a personal review of our financial records which conclusively established that this video was not paid for or authorized by any party associated with our law firm, McCutcheon & Hamner, P.C. posted our response specifically disavowing the video as well as issuing a cease and desist letter to Mr. DeBerry and Definitive Television. Of course, Mr. DeBerry has refused and we are currently investigating our legal options. At this time, we have been instructed by our legal counsel to refrain from comment.

BUT WAIT: It gets even dumber! DeBerry thinks he can sue the Above The Law blog for calling his racist commercial racist! You know what they say about how a man who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer? Jim DeBerry deserves a SPECIAL (booby) PRIZE. Good luck suing the entire Internet, Jimbo!
 

 
Via Copyranter

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.03.2013
10:46 am
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Ford really should have let Marianne Moore name the Edsel
12.02.2013
12:57 pm
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1958 Edsel Convertible
1958 Edsel Convertible
 
In the mid-1950s, the Ford Motor Company was working on a car that they fancied would represent the new cutting edge in automotive pleasure. History records that the Edsel, unveiled in 1956, stands as one of the epochal failures in the history of the horseless carriage. In the telltale detail that seemed to promise an unpropitious outcome, the Edsel was named after Edsel Ford, son of the great Henry Ford. Curiously, Henry Ford II was steadfastly opposed to naming the model after his father, and the decision was reached at a board meeting in which Henry Ford II was not present—still, even if it wasn’t sheer Fordist ego, the inescapably sycophantic quality of the name wasn’t promising.

In 1955 Robert B. Young of Ford’s Marketing Research Department reached out to poet Marianne Moore for assistance on the name of the astounding new jalopy, seeking a moniker that would “convey, through association or other conjuration, some visceral feeling of elegance, fleetness, advanced features and design.” Letters of Note posted the full correspondence over the weekend, and it is hilarious.

Moore comes up with a great many remarkable names, most of them apparently facetious or satirical in intent, although presented with an entirely straight face. Young remarks that “seldom has the auto business had occasion to indulge in so ethereal a matter as this” and appears to brush off Moore’s more ridiculous proposals, noting that “we should like suggestions that we ourselves would not have arrived at. And, in sober fact, have not.”

Among the names Moore offered were “Mongoose Civique,” “Dearborn Diamanté,” “Pluma Piluma,” and, fantastically, “Utopian Turtletop.” On December 23, 1955, Young sent Moore “a bouquet of roses, eucalyptus and white pine” with the note “Merry Christmas to our favorite Turtletopper.”

In all, Ford weighed roughly six thousand names before coming up with “Edsel,” which today is roughly synonymous with “stinkbomb.” It’s impossible to say whether the name was a true factor in the eventual failure of the car, which first hit the road in 1958. In the final note, written by Young’s boss David Wallace, Moore learned that Young was now in the employ of “our glorious U.S. Coast Guard.”

Honestly, the correspondence is so smashingly amusing that it feels like it has to be entirely fictional. But apparently that is not the case.
 
Marianne Moore reads “Bird-Witted”

 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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12.02.2013
12:57 pm
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Nike Brillo boxes
11.23.2013
02:16 pm
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Nike Brillo boxes
 
The other day I came across this intriguing picture of Nike boxes mashed up with Warholian Brillo boxes with no accompanying explanation. They were so well executed that it seemed like they might be legit, a new trendy way that Nike has decided to ship their precious shoes, but then I realized that the size of the box is all wrong and so it must be a fake of some kind. The truth lies somewhere in between.
 
Nike Brillo boxes
 
In Portland there are occasional Nike-themed art exhibitions, almost certainly with approval and funding by the indomitable Oregon sports apparel company itself. The shows are done under the banner “Nike Graphic Studio,” and you can see some of the artworks—all of them Nike-related, but some more obliquely than others—on this Tumblr.

This work is called “Keep It Clean,” and it was (rather excellently) executed by Oregon-based artist Lonny Hurley, who in addition to various art projects also has done gig posters for the Melvins, Built to Spill, Bob Dylan, Mudhoney, and the Electric Six. The September 2011 exhibition in which it appeared was called Nike Graphic Studio 1.0 (there has since been a 2.0 and a 3.0), and it was held at the Compound Gallery in Portland.
 
Here’s a Warhol Brillo box for comparison (Warhol did these in several different ways, but this one is the one Hurley was seeking to imitate):
Warhol Brillo box
 
If you’re so inclined, you can buy one of these boxes from Compound Gallery for $75.

Here’s a brief video about the Nike Graphic Studio 2.0 show. “Keep It Clean” doesn’t appear in it, but other works from Nike Graphic Studio 1.0 do appear in it, so I don’t know what’s up with that.

 
via WXN&MLKN

Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.23.2013
02:16 pm
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Jodie Foster, age 9, for View-Master
11.21.2013
10:29 am
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jodie foster
 
I abidingly loved my Viewmaster when I was a kid. If you’re not sure what one is, I feel badly for you, but it’s the descendent of those old stereoscopic photo viewers, evolved over a century to become a brilliant children’s toy. My favorite slides were the Hanna-Barbera character tie-ins, which, looking back, were of VASTLY higher quality than the cheaply ground-out cartoons themselves. I also quite loved the travelogues - I may never have been to the Alps, but by god, I saw them in full 3D glory when I was five! I’d love to wax rhapsodic at length about these things, but DM’s Paul J. Gallagher beat me to the post by about a year. It’s a wonderful post, you should have a look.

In this Viewmaster ad from 1971, Jodie Foster, a full five years before her show-stealing performance as an underaged prostitute in Taxi Driver brought her to America and John Hinkley Jr.’s attention, similarly (though far less scandalously) stole the show from the venerable Henry Fonda!
 

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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11.21.2013
10:29 am
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All shook up: Sports drink ad banned over vigorous wrist action
11.20.2013
10:02 am
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tossersdrink.jpg
 
For those seeking confirmation that all ad men are wankers, should look no further than this viral advertisement for a sports drink that has just been banned by UK’s Advertising Standards Authority.

The ad for protein drink “For Goodness Shakes,” features various men apparently “doing something” in public places. The ad was sent out as an embedded video in a marketing email, which asked the question: “What’s going on here?”

The money shot for this thigh-slapping innuendo was the final tag-line:

“We shake for you ... the protein shake without the shaker.”

The ASA investigated the ad after receiving a complaint that it was likely to cause widespread offense.

The drinks manufacturer My Goodness, claimed the ad was just a humorous take on an old comedy routine, and that the video was intended for “sports-interested adult males.” [Is this a euphemism?—Ed.]

The ASA had concerns that the video alluded to the hand shandy and included a sequence that suggested a man had splooged all over a woman’s back.

The advertising authority has banned the ad, and told My Goodness not to produce any more ads with similar content in the future. (Fnar, fnar.)
 

 
Via The Guardian

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.20.2013
10:02 am
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