more unintentional advertising
today's example is a PSA against smoking pot (something i'm actually fond of myself, so i may be biased here). this time, you can actually watch it! the clip is called "dog". most of ads from this group tend to be pretty good, as they don't use the "scare the fuck out of kids with lies" tactic. instead, they simply let you know that smoking lots of pot will motivate you to do little beyond sit on the couch all day and play video games. we'll not get into the cause/effect thing here.
anyway, the recent message has be pot changes your friends (into grateful dead listening, bongo drum playing, tie-dye wearing hippies! no? just into kids who look like they stayed up till 2am, watching bad movies? okay.) and keeps them from doing fun, non-drug related things with you. this one carries the same theme, only it slips in an unintentional message. why? because the lecturing, lonely friend is some teenaged girl's dog. onward!
the ad: a tastefully typical teenage girl comes home from school, drops her books on the counter and procedes to grab a soda from the fridge. her dog saunters in behind her, hops up onto a stool and then gently reprimands her for her smoking of the evil weed, as she no longer plays with him. but if she wants to, he'll be outside. she intially looks confused, cause her dog is talking to her, but then collapses into sorrow as she reflects on the loss of puppy love.
the intentional message: smoking pot will keep you from playing with your dog. since dog is man's best friend, this also keeps you from your best friend. see! drugs are bad!
the unintentional message: holy fuck! if you smoke enough kind bud, you can talk to your dog! that's awesome. pass me the bong.
which message wins? you decide!
5 comments:
See, after I saw this commercial I thought, "Well, yeah. If the dog is your only friend, you are probably going to wind up doing drugs." Of course the dog would never understand this.
i think the dog is just pissed cause she doesn't share.
I saw this too and was surprised it takes a very different approach to the Drug War. Ordinarily, pot is lumped in with crystal meth, heroin etc. This makes pot look not quite as evil as previous campaigns, which means they're kind of talking out of both sides of their mouth. Either they're against drugs or they're against most drugs except pot.
Oh my god. Did I say that out loud?
I've always thought these ads looked like they were designed by people who were high.
pass the bong, i wanna talk with ym dog. I actually do a radio drama with Marcus the talking dog and the Bong Ripper. Perhaps we should do some promotional pot smoking PSAs. i got mp3s of it on the blog under barabra's bedroom audio.
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