Spooky Ads and You

[dewline]

We've recently had an ad campaign launched up here. It's unusual for one reason in particular: the product it advertises does not exist.

It's called Obay, and the ads make it appear to be a drug, tailored to ensure obedience of your children in all things. That is the second unusual aspect of the campaign, as it explicitly promotes brainwashing. Most real pharma-campaigns promote their drugs as useful for anything and everything but.

Then came the confession from the organizers. It turns out that it's an organization called Colleges Ontario doing some kind of advocacy stunt. As you've seen from checking the second of the Torontoist.com links above, they're going to start explaining themselves tomorrow.

I'll be interested to see what the explanation of the campaign ends up being, but I'm wondering if it's not beside the point. I have a half-serious, half-amused concern over how many people on the buses every day took this for a real product and started asking at their local doctor's or pharmacist's about getting this drug into their childrens' disciplinary/health regimens. I think we all know someone who could make that mistake, no matter where we live.

And I'm not saying that the tagline "From the makers of WhyBecauseISaidSo" wasn't a giveaway clue to the true nature of the thing either. Certainly, it's in the best tradition of Adbusters. Whoever came up with this...Adbusters ought to recruit them post-haste.

Not sure what else to say at the moment, so I'm opening up the virtual microphone.

Comments

[si-fuller.livejournal.com]

There was an interesting ad campaign over here years ago, for a beer called Redback Bitter. The beer didn't exist, it was a study by a university, but they created such demand for the product that a real Redback Bitter ended up being put on the market and was highly successful for several years.

Then there was the study into urban myths that another university did, they invented the story that plastic softdrink bottles full of water, if left out on your lawn, would stop dogs from going to the toilet nearby. Because they won't want to foul their drinking water or something like that. It was meant to be a study in the local area (Brisbane I believe), but the myth absolutely exploded, and half the lawns in Australia were sporting old plastic bottles for many years. The irony being, these people didn't want their lawns defaced by dogs, so they left what is essentially piles of rubbish all over their yard. And nobody seemed to notice that it didn't work for what must have been a decade or more. This was in the early 80s, but even earlier this year some lifestyle programme was examining whether it works or not. Though they might just have crap researchers who haven't realised nobody does that any more.

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Apparently "Colleges Ontario" confessed to their ownership last week. The "correction" started showing up this morning, as reported here (http://torontoist.com/2008/02/obay_phase_two.php).

As someone named "Evil Wizard" commented shortly after Colleges Ontario owned up:
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Dear God, you people can't recognize a culture jam when you see one. What, are you over 40?
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[looking in mirror] Yep, at least in my case.