Month: April 2024

INCYMI: April

Tourism South Australia learnt a hard lesson about the internet when they asked the media not to refer to the capital city as RADelaide. Just ask BOM (and pointedly not The Bureau), you can’t give yourself a nickname, you can’t fight the nicknames given to you, and any attempt to hide or remove information will just increase public awareness of it.

RSPCA has had their first rebrand in fifty years. As the organisation celebrates its 200th anniversary, they’ve switched up the classic octagon for bright colours and fun animal stencils. To be fair, we’d probably all dye our hair electric blue if we reached 200.

We all remember where we were when we first saw Dove’s real beauty ad, right? To mark twenty years of ride-or-die dedication to fighting toxic beauty standards, Dove has pledged to never use AI-generated imagery to represent “real bodies” in its advertising.

American television promised us so much in terms of iconic, exciting, new foods, but when you get there you find out everything is made of corn syrup and tastes like plastic. For those formerly of the commonwealth and now living in the land of the free, Marmite’s new campaign has recruited ‘smugglers’ to sneak the spread into the USA. Those willing to accept their mission can team up with the less cool version of Vegemite and sneak the contraband to expats who miss the salty taste of home.

The cost of living crisis has kept a lot of people from leaving the nest. This can be hard on children and parents alike, but unfortunately this is the monkey’s paw deal mum and dad entered when purchasing a home for spare change and shiny beads last century, so we’re only making things less awkward for the children. Sprite has launched the “Knocklace Collection,” high-tech jewellery that alerts you when parents are nearby. Aimed at young adults living at home, the necklace warns you when family is about to encroach on your personal territory.

A mailer campaign for new horror flick The First Omen sent out envelopes containing creepy children’s drawings of scenes from the film. The drawback to this inventive plan – the explanation this was not in fact the worst mail you’ve ever received came in a follow up letter, giving you plenty of time to freak out and call the police, as one woman discovered. Scaring someone so badly they call the authorities would usually mean you’ve failed at your PR campaign, but when it’s advertising a horror movie, success may be measured differently.

Ad standards has cracked down on ad by The Climate Study Group running in The Australian and the Herald Sun, due to it being indistinguishable from a real article. The important context here is The Climate Study Group is an unincorporated group of seven conservative men, and not actually anything of actual study or intelligence. Not disclosing your pseudoscience and conspiracy is a paid ad and not a real article puts you in the kind of hot water you can now find in Antarctica.

If you liked 500 Days of Summer but burn easily, this is for you. Cerave’s latest ad is a pitch perfect recreation of a rom-com trailer, down to the clumsy protagonist and comic relief best friends, aimed at inspiring viewers to fall in love with sunscreen.