Are you in on the joke?

Guest post by blue milk (who knew there was so much to say on feminist motherhood?) where this is being cross-posted.

Spare a thought for advertising executives. Imagine trying to write a TV advertisement for chicken? Actually wait it gets worse, the client wants you to write a TV ad that will have everyone talking about their chicken? Your annual bonus is riding on it. You’re not feeling very inspired at the moment, maybe you missed out on the Grange this year, and you’re scratching for ideas. Looks like you’ll have to fall back on the oldest trick in your advertising text book.

Recently I posted on an Australian advertisement for Nando’s chicken featuring a busy working mother wanting chicken so badly that she has to wear a fictitious Nando’s patch to control her cravings. OK its novel, but not enough to get anyone talking about Nando’s right? Well, here’s the catch – the Mum works as a stripper – where to hide that unsightly patch? Fear not, Nando’s also does a line of fictitious gum to beat the cravings. Oh its hilarious and did you see her great tits, that’ll have the Dads paying attention? Laugh, laugh, drinks all round, we’re getting that bonus this year.

Filed under: consumerism, sexuality

Weekend wittering

FFS, world meeja, just quit whining about covering stories that involve a certain celebutante, will ya? Stop arguing when other journos want to put the stories through the shredder. I used to do some snarking on celebs here at Hoyden, and a while back I mostly stopped. It’s not that hard to ignore them, and it’s nice to think of other things. She and others of her ilk will disappear if we just don’t look.

From The Simpsons, Treehouse of Horrors 6: Attack of the 50 foot Eyesores
“Together: [singing] Just don’t look. Just don’t look.
[people turn away; the monsters turn to look]
Just don’t look. Just don’t look.
[more people turn away]
Just don’t look. Just don’t look.
[the monsters try to destroy things faster, but start
collapsing]“

(approx length 6.5 minutes, song approx 5 minutes in)

Bonus: video of the journo refusing to read the celebutante news report. (approx 3 mins)

Who else are we sick to death of?

Filed under: Media, celebritism, consumerism

Consumerism and children (and parents)

Lauren is guest-blogging this week at Feministe. Her review of a book about marketing to children, and her discursion about her own rules for buying toys for her son, is a cracker of a post.

Filed under: Read 'ems, consumerism, family

Been trying to find the words

The Nandos Portuguese Chicken withdrawal-patch pole-dancing commercials. That probably doesn’t make sense to anyone who hasn’t seen them. [link]

I have been slackjawed for the last fortnight since I first saw the ads. I truly thought they’d be taken off the air after the first night due to huge complaints, but no. I finally go to their website, and when I follow the ad archive links to ‘Latest Ads’ I come to a putative link but then it doesn’t go anywhere. I’m only hoping that it’s been delinked due to at least some viewer complaints.

Predictably, the ad is up on YouTube with the contributor comment “awesome ad from Nandos”. You’ll have to click to “appreciate” the irony of it all, and why I’nm lost for words.

Filed under: consumerism

Aargheeheee! The rapier wit of the Gore-Deranged is destroying me!

Carbon Credit Killers.

Why We Do It

The reason we sell Carbon Debits is simple – we want to take away the pathetic excuse of Carbon Credits from those liberals who hide their shame filled lives behind money-bought lunacy. Carbon Credits are simply a way for the rich (Al Gore) to continue to hypocritically live lives that look nothing like what they try to enforce on everyone else in society. We want to take away those excuses.

Our goal is to completely wipe out every Carbon Credit ever bought by selling their nullifying opposite – the Carbon Debit. The guilt and shame that caused people to buy Carbon Credits in the first place will be placed back on them as we let them know that their actions caused us to nullify their credits. They are the cause of us killing trees; they need to face up to their guilt.

This message is important for one reason – Far Left Liberals are lunatics that operate solely on shame of themselves, their success, their country, and their wealth. It is time to expose their ideas and self-defeating idiocy – and selling Carbon Debits is the best way to do that.

Seriously, I hate this site. But underneath all the hateful posturing they may just have a point about the rich simply outsourcing their carbon debt, while people living in poverty are fingerwagged at for failing to embrace their squalor and starvation while knowing from observation that industrialisation is a proven path to relative prosperity.

Then of course I realise that distracting me from important messages about broad ecological responsibility (poor people may want prosperity, but not at the price of toxic contamination when fully informed) and the reactionary attack on rational discourse in the public arena is exactly what they want to happen, and I nearly fell for it.

Complex issues are hard by definition. It’s wrong to try and boil them down to two opposing sides playing chess and trying to sweep the board.

Filed under: Politics, activism/charity, consumerism, economics, vitriol

Everyday Codebreaking in Australia, vol.1

As you know, I’ve been talking a bit about violations of the WHO Code. I’ve started collecting some examples of everyday Code-breaking in Australia.

My last example was of Wyeth’s transgressions. Have you heard of Nutricia, a Dutch Numico subsidiary? Some examples of issues in Numico’s past include direct-to-mother promotional campaigns in China, hospital violations in Indonesia, violations in Russia, and concealment and lies about salmonella contamination of their infant formula products in the UK and France.

Nutricia’s Australian website proclaims:

“… at Nutricia Australia we have adopted one of the strictest interpretations of the code in the interest of mother and baby.”

This is false.

IBFAN gives a detailed summary of the World Health Organisation Code on the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes here. Note particularly these articles:

“There should be no advertising or other form of promotion to the general public of products within the scope of this Code.” Article 5.1
* Companies are banned from seeking contact with pregnant women and mothers and must not promote products covered by the Code to them or the general public in any way .[...] Advertising is a form of promotion as are: direct mail, leaflets and pamphlets, posters, product samples, free gifts, video shows and lectures.

[...] Article 5.3 covers retail outlets. It clarifies the ban on promotion by citing the following examples:
* point of sale advertising
* giving of samples
* discount coupons, premiums, special sales, loss-leaders and tie-in sales.”

Here’s what dropped into my letterbox last week. The Woolworths discount promotions leaflet is on the left, and the Coles one is on the right.

Filed under: breastfeeding, consumerism, family, peeves

You’re soaking in it: the marketing of violence

Some people think we’re rather odd for avoiding buying firearm toys for the Lad. Some of them, politely, keep it to themselves. Others make loud, condescending Pfffft! noises, and spit rather scornfully at us for being “first-time” parents trapped in our own la-la-land of unrealistic self-expectations and ridiculous ideals. “But all boys make weapon toys”, they say, “whether they’re exposed to weapons or not. They’ll make a gun out of a piece of toast. Why not just buy them the toy guns in the first place? Give in now, ya wallies!”

Whether they’re exposed to them or not? Does weapon culture inevitably arise from whole cloth, writ into the genes, in each generation? More importantly, how would any of us know? The language of violence is everywhere. Everywhere. Short of locking a newborn in a room empty of windows and media, they will soak it up from the environment – they don’t need to invent it.

This gallery brought that home to me today, with a sickening *thud*. It’s a smorgasbord of everyday images of aggressive domination. The stuff that is subliminal to most of us now – that our kids are soaking in. Statuary, James Bond posters, green Hulk hands, video games, war movies, military parades, media images of the Iraq war, the glorification of colonialism, foxhunts, Crusade imagery, baby camouflage gear, severed-finger lollies, violence against children, images of sexual domination. Ripped out of context and juxtaposed, it’s a litany of hostility that induces instant nausea and a creeping horror.

So I don’t buy capguns and plastic AK-47s and GI-Joes. I’m going to keep not buying them. And I’m going to keep reinforcing to the Lad that if he insists on playing “hunters”, he is hunting for food animals only, and in no circumstances does he ever, EVER point his tuba-gun or his finger-gun at people, even in play. Ever.

We’re surrounded by images of sexual violence, but that doesn’t mean I should buy my preschooler an abduction-and-rape game kit with toy rope, duct tape, and a knife. So why should I buy him murder-rehearsal tools?

Filed under: Sociology, consumerism, family

Insufferable coffee snob gloat

I just got a brand new Rancilio Silva espresso machine, and you (probably) don’t have one.

It is built like the proverbial brick shithouse. I need no longer dread any difficulties finding our cricket bat to combat an intruder: the coffee filter holder alone could easily fell an ox. Yes, I will be updating this post with pictures once I’ve picked the kids up from school.

Update 17 Feb: or I’ll get around to putting the picutre up on the weekend, actually.

originally uploaded by tigitogs. Note industrial-grade new coffee filter on right and old plasticky Saeco one on left for comparison.

We were meant to get it yesterday as our mutual V-day present, but it was a day late getting delivered.

You know what this means, don’t you my fellow coffee snobs? Yes, now I have to start roasting my own beans.

Addit: I’ve had the first cup of coffee, and now I know exactly how Harry felt a few years ago.

Filed under: consumerism, food/drink

DJs sues thinktank over report on sexualised images of children in advertising

Todays SMH: Sex, lies and advertising: DJs sues over child exploitation claims

IN WHAT is believed to be a world first, David Jones begins a legal case tomorrow in which it is suing the left-leaning think tank the Australia Institute and its executive director, Clive Hamilton, over claims the giant retailer’s advertising eroticised and sexually exploited children.

The case, in the Federal Court in Sydney, is thought to be the first time a court will consider the sexualisation of children in advertising.

The retailer is suing under the Trade Practices Act, claiming the institute engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct. The avenue of suing for defamation was closed to big companies after the introduction of uniform defamation laws in January 2006.

Filed under: consumerism, law

Bring in the real women

Repellent, it appears, is the mot-de-semaine:

I think American society would benefit greatly if we got rid of all the Sara Jessica Parker wannabe stinky swanks and sent them to the deepest arm pits of Africa. We should then bring in real women from all over the world who would know how to treat a man and let the man handle the finances.

Just one comment from the prime specimens in this thread. Read the lot (unless you have a TMJ condition – teethgrinding is really bad for that).

via Jill at Feministe

Addendum: There are more prime specimens elsewhere, enough for us all! However, if all us stinky skanks don’t start behaving more like real women right now, they’re going to just not talk to us, and they might even burn their ties!

Filed under: consumerism, vitriol