Funny thing, for me personally the BenQ one is the most offensive, because it's the most sincere. It reads as a campaign they might actually pitch, using 9/11 as a way of hawking their product and associating their brand with Really Important Things. Sort of like those fucking Chevy ads that ran during the baseball World Series here in the States that featured images of hurricane Katrina.

The Lego and White Out ads felt more like irreverent jokes not meant for wider consumption (though who knows when "creatives" are involved).

You're right about the bic&lego - these were made by creative teams sans brief but that BenQ ad actually ran as far as I can tell. I'm just stunned, back when I was churning out ads for condoms, tabasco, RSPCA and all them other things adkids work on for portfolio pieces we at least tried to make the ads possible to run. Those ads clearly never would.

you know, in a way, it is almost heartening that ad companies/teams can be so inept.

You lived in a rolled up newspaper at the bottom of a lake? Luxury! We had twenty-seven of us living inside a frozen yak carcass high atop the Himalayas ... and that's how we liked it!

Well at least you guys had a view up there. From my newspaper there was nothing but mud to see.


Edgeways, it would be cute, if it wasn't so damned hard to get into agencies when you're a young gun starting out. There are good teams, there are great teams, there are teams with potential and then there are these teams and that just makes me shake my head - we're teams like this always around? Come to think of it, they probably were.

More ad fuckups by the way, rememer the weapon of choice fat boy slim video where Christopher Walken gets his groove on? Vasakronan in Sweden did their own version with another male lead doing a dance in an empty office. Problem is, he can't dance.

aaaargh, i meant to say "were teams like this always around

Man. Editing comments to remove brand names? Living under communism capitalism sucks.

Yeah, I didn't like doing that but creative director of the agency and me had a long talk about it and he was scared to loose the BIC account down in southamerica (i forget which country) because someone at headquarters in the US freaked about those spec ads. Clearly labelling it spec and just discussing the ads as such didn't help calm BIC down at all.

hmm. he moves like a canned ham.