// INCYMI
April 2023
This month, we’re all about embracing the weirdness. With all the holidays occurring this month, advertisers seemed to realise everyone was going to be stuck at home with the shops closed a lot, so they had to up the entertainment. Kick back, grab some on-sale easter eggs and explore the campaigns that dared to be different.
- Heinz
- Glenlivet
- Duolingo
- 10PM
- Amsterdam
- The Florence Museum
- Cerhom
- Amazon
- Levi's
- Modibodi
- Pepsi
If there has to be someone in the room who always takes the joke too far, you can bet it’s a social media manager wandering what the kids these days are up to. This is why every April we are forced to reckon with the influx of hilarious and totally real no seriously pranks done by major brands. Some lowlights this year are Heinz’s Lovecraftian-horror of a bean bag made from baked beans, and the Goonlivet, a goon bag of whisky, although you could play a pretty good game of Goon of Fortune with that one. The only winners would be Duolingo’s fake dating show, a Love Island-esque competition where none of the contestants speak the same language, and of course, the greatest prank ever.

In a departure from their usual association with not putting healthy things in your body, Heinz has partnered with tattoo ink manufacturer Electric Ink to create a pigment in their official signature Pantone shade of red. After recent health concerns over colour tattoo pigments, Heinz goal is to create an ink that only uses non-harmful ingredients. Picky little brothers everywhere rejoice, you can finally say ketchup is a healthy choice.

1.8 million bacteria-laden, horror-infested mattresses are illegally dumped in Australia every year, a statistic that isn’t shocking to anyone trying to access the bins in an apartment complex. To bring awareness to the issue, mattress company 10PM has turned illegally dumped mattresses into a guerrilla billboard campaign. The ad copy has been printed directly onto discarded mattresses marring the inner-city suburbs of Sydney, turning them into king-sized billboards.

For a different kind of cleaning up the city, Amsterdam’s new tourism campaign comes down to a central message: stay the hell away. The new discouragement campaign aims to deter men aged 18 to 35 from travelling to the Netherlands capital city, as statistically they can’t seem to handle the easy access to a red light district and legal marijuana without going on a bender. It’s like when the really sheltered kid from your school gets their licence and goes way too hard in the other direction.

The international equivalent of the co-worker no one invites to pub lunches, American conservatives continue to ruin everyone’s day. A Florida school principal was recently fired after students were shown a picture of Michelangelo’s David, as the classic biblical statue was deemed ‘pornographic material’. In response to this stupid decision, The Florence Museum has offered to have the school board visit the exhibit, which is the kind of classy response you would expect from a fine art establishment.

Speaking of very European attitudes toward reproductive organs, CerHom, a French health association, has found a way to turn unsolicited dick pics on dating apps into diagnostic tools. Over 50% of women have received a non-consensual dick pic, which while a downer statistic, is at least better than meeting a serial killer. (1 in 160,000 chance for serial killers, 1 in 200 chance for people convicted of any crime.) The company has set up fake dating profiles and upon inevitably receiving the unwanted slugfest, an auto-response will lead them to a free, anonymous consultation.

Your teenage years are a hellish landscape of insecurity and anxiety that’ll make you wish you had the ability to turn invisible. But in the kind of fresh positivity we all could have used as neurotic teens, Amazon’s new ad sees a girl learn to embrace her growing moustache. The new spot by Olivia Wilde, director of the equally positive and upbeat teenage portrait Booksmart, features a teen girl get inspired by moustachioed and unibrowed heroes who came before her.

Levi’s has come under fire for their decision to create more representation among their models by replacing humans with AI-generated images. The point of diversity amongst models is to give opportunities to those usually dismissed from fashion and showcase the inherent beauty of women who don’t meet the very narrow standard previously dictated. Putting a bunch of pixels on the screen is a very shallow attempt at inclusion, literally just looking the part without putting in any work. Then again, as any art student being asked to justify their work can tell you, it’s very easy to pull up social justice reasons on the fly, and it’s very likely pixels are a lot cheaper than people.

For their new campaign, Modibodi is encouraging young people to both unleash their creativity and be open about their periods, the direct opposite of what’s taught at every high school around the country. Modibodi is asking creatives under 18 to design, draw, make, or create what ‘period power’ means to them, for the chance to have their design made into an exclusive range of period underwear.

Pepsi is rebranding for their 125th birthday, throwing it back to their rock & roller cola wars image of the last century, rather than the stilted minimalism we saw being handed to riot police by Kendall Jenner. The days of lower-case austerity are gone! All hail the return to Pepsi Max-imalism.
Extra, extra!
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