It doesn’t matter if you don’t know Japanese. You have already learned two things by watching:

1) It’s an ad for some kind of spray-on skin product. (It’s actually sunscreen.)

2) It seems to be a testimonial.      By a robot.

Can we open a Japanese Mortar? Please??

Special thanks to AdFreak for this one.

If you’re downtown at pretty much any time of day on pretty much any block, you can’t avoid them. The moment you see them, you mentally prepare yourself. Sometimes a mean comeback pops to mind, like, "No thanks, I hate children," or "Trees are ugly. Cut ’em down!" But usually you just carefully avoid eye contact, pretend you’re on your cell phone, or, if you’re feeling really un-confrontational, cross to the other side of the street before they see you.

I have nothing personal against street canvassers. I was one once. They’re average kids trying to make rent while doing something that they at least think they believe in. But more often than not, they’re being taken advantage of by an intermediary company that pays well below minimum wage and rips off the non-profits that hire them. That aside, street canvassers are freaking annoying and most of us plop them into the same category as the panhandlers they share the sidewalk with. We feel guilty for a second, but when they start following us down the block, we run for our lives.

Here’s my advice to Greenpeace and Save the Children and the Sierra Club and whoever else I ignore every day walking down Geary Street: Ditch the kids. They can work at Starbucks or something. Get over your down-with-the-man anti-capitalism bias and buy some ad space. There are a ton of talented students and generous professionals who probably already have brilliant ideas you could use to motivate and inspire people – or, at the very least, remind them you exist without making them want to crush the dreams of hapless college students.

There’s been a lot of really fantastic advertising for non-profits. The Ad Council does inspiring work routinely for extremely deserving causes.

This is the ad that inspired me to write this blog:

We’ll see what happens, but they’re absolutely right – if even one Olympian does one thing in reference to Tibet, than this single ad is worth many, many times what they bought it for. This ad on it’s own made me seriously think about their cause for probably ten minutes total, and pass it on.

So… do you think a street canvasser could do this? Can a team of wind-breakered 19-year-olds with rehearsed pitches and clipboards do as much as one really great ad?

I don’t know the numbers – maybe guilt and dogged persistence are more effective than smart copy and strategic media buys – in which case Ryan and I would probably be out of jobs – or maybe non-profits should be smarter with their money and more 19-year-olds should save their idealism for a more deserving method.

JC Penny’s DorkDodge is supposed to promote their new dorm-centric line via 1992-style pixelated RPG. I’ll admit it has some retro charm and actually kept me sort of entertained, but I have a few qualms:

1) The entire premise of the game. You’re a college girl trying to meet up with your Christian Slater-lookin date, who is slowly losing interest outside your dorm. On the way outside, various college boys try to hit on you, and if you even vaguely engage them, they follow you unless you bug your girlfriend for a product-oriented solution. If you somehow fail to make it outside in time, your date ditches you. You have six minutes. It took me 40 seconds.

2) Are college girls seriously this lame? ….actually, nevermind. I vaguely remember when I was a college girl, um, two months ago.

3) How do I know Jason is any better than all the other guys who are totally into me? Maybe they’re not that bad. I mean, they followed me all the way outside. That’s more than Jason would ever do for me.  I don’t even think he likes me that much. I mean he wouldn’t even wait six minutes for me! WTF?

4) Who can even afford college anymore anyway?

5) The acting. You just have to play it yourself to understand. 

6) It encourages college girls to be even lamer than they already are by letting them think a) that knowing how to impress a diverse range of people will only result in them obsessively stalking you, b) that the only guys who are worth it are impatient, Christian-Slater lookin jerkholes, and c) that you should always take the advice of obnoxious baret-wearing French chicks. Not to mention every character is a blatant, shallow stereotype. Including yourself, if you maintain a winning strategy.

But you know what, I played it, and at least it took up an hour of my time by giving me something to blog/complain about. That would be one hour, forty seconds total.
And they did get me to link it – even suggest that you play it.

So… kudos to the team that made this, and sorry the original post was kinda mean. Maybe I’m just jealous because I never had a hot date with an impatient Christian Slater-lookin jerkhole in college. And he never brought me flowers, either. Jerk.

Thanks AdRants.

This is, apparently, a Soviet-era tv spot for an Estonian meat company. Remember how the commies always used to refer to us as "capitalist pigdogs?" We suspect this dish is what they were talking about. (On the other hand, that chicken looks more nervous than a Trotskyite in a room full of Stalinists)

Спасибо to our comrades at Glorious Boing-Boing Workers’ Collective.