Slippery slingshots

Boys and Beefcake- "A decade or so ago, 10-year-old boys couldn't have cared less about their physiques. "Today more boys than we know or can imagine are as affected by the physical attributes they see in media and advertising" as girls are, says psychologist William Pollack, author of "Real Boys" and "Real Boys' Voices." "

Crossover Creative - From Volkswagen to Procter & Gamble to McDonald's, major advertisers are increasingly looking to use their ethnic advertising to reach the mainstream market as the lines among consumer groups are starting to blur, experts said Monday.
Known as ''crossover creative,'' the trend is forcing general market agencies and multicultural specialists to cooperate in developing advertising campaigns, said panelists at a multicultural-marketing conference held by the Association of National Advertisers.
The driving force is demographic, experts said: Minorities make up a growing percentage of the U.S. population, and companies seeking a global reach must also appeal to consumers of multiple cultures.
''This is one of the hottest topics in advertising,'' said Laurel Wentz, international and multicultural editor of Advertising Age trade journal. "We are seeing more and more clients making this part of their strategy from the beginning.''

Big Ass Fan and their ads have people's panties in a knot. I think it's great! (Danke Clay)

A sexually suggestive campaign for the lads' magazine FHM that appeared to show a woman performing oral sex on a man has been banned by the advertising watchdog.
The Advertising Standards Authority said the advert, for spin-off fashion title FHM Collections, was "likely to cause serious or widespread offence" and ordered the magazine not to use it again.
The offending image showed two scantily clad women dancing together at a glamorous party and another woman kneeling in front of a male partygoer in the background."
See it here.

From the press release: "General Motors OnStar is turning its successful, award-winning "real stories" advertising campaign into a 30-minute documercial that will air on HGTV, The Food Network, Discovery Channel and TLC beginning Nov. 8. The documercial, titled "Tales from the Road" -- allows viewers to experience the significance of OnStar's safety, security and peace of mind services using emotionally compelling stories of real-life OnStar subscribers."
Aren't these things usually called "infomercials"? What's with the name change? Do they really think it's going to make someone more willing to watch it?

An ad campaign for Fagg`s, "the great straight coffee", is not homophobic an advertising complaints board has ruled. The New Zealand coffee company ran afoul of gay rights groups over a billboard showing a local television personality enjoying a cup of Fagg`s coffee under the slogan "Not as Ponsonby as the name suggests". Ponsonby is Auckland`s gay neighbourhood.
Complainants to the Advertising Standards Complaints Board said that the ad was "seriously offensive" because it "exploited the fear that Ponsonby is full of fags".
Faggs, which has been a household name in New Zealand for almost a century and is named for its founder, argued that in this context of the ad, ‘straight’, was not the opposite of `gay` but rather the opposite of 'pretentious'. Maybe this coffee company might want to consider changing the name of their coffee. Seems the easiest way to avoid such confusion. Granted it has been around for ages. I'm not sure what I think of this.

Can you really compare ad culture to Islamic militant culture? Weird.