Spooky Ads and You

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.

How do you meter kindness?

How do you meter kindness?
Originally uploaded by dwight_ew

Not that it's stopping our current mayor from trying. These gadgets are his idea. He's proposed it as an alternative to directly giving to panhandlers, beggars, and so on through the labels list for such fellow citizens.

This juror is still deliberating on the verdict.