Category:
Business

Follies of the Mad Men #126



How many idiotic themes can you find in this ad? Let me start you out:

1) Women like to hang out in bestiality bars.

2) Only men can or should be responsible for buying condoms.

3) A woman will sense a condom in your pocket and respond.

4) You can be the biggest jerk in the world, but so long as you buy a condom....

I can't go on. Your turn.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 23, 2010 - Comments (6)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Birth Control , Men, Women

Follies of the Mad Men #125



1) Our food product is so dense and indestructible that it can serve in place of a football.

2) It is not sold on merits of taste, but simply as a "bulking-up" agent.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Nov 12, 2010 - Comments (2)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Food, Sports, 1960s

Follies of the Mad Men #124

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These images both derive from Life magazine for November 11, 1949.

It must indicate something about capitalism circa 1949 that both ad campaigns chose this gigantic, brutal, triumphalist imagery. (Perhaps the two campaigns were created by the same agency even?) The postwar reign of corporate overlords has arrived. "Beware, puny humans! Our glorious products bestride the landscape and will crush you, unless you buy and consume mass quantities!"

Could there be a less-enticing public face for a company?

Posted By: Paul - Thu Oct 14, 2010 - Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Dreams and Nightmares, 1940s, Alcohol

See A Thief, Catch A Thief

I don't know about you but I've been looking for a new job lately and have not had much luck. But I got excited when I saw this article today - a company in Britain is going to start streaming video feeds from surveillance cameras in the hopes that "armchair cops" can help catch thieves in the act. Participants can earn up to $1,000 pounds when offenders are caught. Of course there has been some criticism about the scheme. You can read more about it here.

Posted By: Nethie - Thu Oct 07, 2010 - Comments (6)
Category: Business, Cops, Crime, Government, Jobs and Occupations, Video, More Things To Worry About

Follies of the Mad Men #122



More ill-conceived use of music in advertising.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Sep 15, 2010 - Comments (2)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Domestic, Appliances, Music, 1950s

Quis Fabricariet Ipsos Fabricares?

Dresden art dealer Petra Kujau was found guilty of forgery this week, after passing off three hundred paintings she had come into possession of as the work of her "great-uncle", Konrad Kujau. The 51 year-old singer turned dealer would add a facsimile of Kujau senior's signature to the paintings, then sell them on at a greatly inflated price.

So far, so mundane. What makes this story particularly WU worthy is that Konrad Kujau was himself a forger, and his self-proclaimed niece was selling her forgeries as "genuine forgeries" created by her famous uncle Konrad. It all begins to make sense once you learn that Mr. Kujau did not limit himself to forging paintings, but was also known to forge the odd diary or two, specifically those of one Adolf Hitler. Although ultimately unsuccessful, his forgeries of the Hitler Diaries were good enough to fool not just many newspapers and magazines, but also at least two historians, and the unmasking of the hoax caused many a journalist and editor a red face. But the notoriety afforded Konrad Kujau as the man "behind" the Hitler diaries meant that he could command considerable sums for something a small as Hitler's signature on a card, and original "Kujau forgeries" soon became enough of a collector's item that he could make a comfortable living from them after his release from prison in 1987.

After his death in September 2000 his business was carried on by Petra Kujau, who evidently decided that one forgery was as good as another, and began importing cheap copies of famous works from Asian suppliers and passing them off as eminently more desirable "Kujau forgeries", which in one sense they were. But soon the sheer volume of Kujau forgeries on the market aroused the suspicions of at least one collector, who tipped off the police to the double forgery.

Which just leaves the question, just where can I get hold of a genuine Petra Kujau double forgery? Now that's something I'd like to own!

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Sun Sep 12, 2010 - Comments (6)
Category: Art, Business, Crime, Frauds, Cons and Scams, Hoaxes and Imposters and Imitators

Follies of the Mad Men #120

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[From Life magazine for January 10 1949.]

This hideous Donnie Darko-style image will haunt you forever, and make you swear off beer-drinking at once.

Furries and beer: two things that must never mix.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Aug 25, 2010 - Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, 1940s, Alcohol

Manpacks

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Guys! Never wash your underwear again! Just wear it till it rots, and get new ones in the mail!

Manpacks is your savior!

Posted By: Paul - Fri Aug 20, 2010 - Comments (5)
Category: Business, Underwear, Men

Follies of the Mad Men #119



Mad Men, here's a secret: music is the realm of emotion and poetry and piercing observations, of romance and satire, of history and dreams.

So when you create a song that is full of boring statistics about a boring object, you look like an idiot, and so does your product.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 19, 2010 - Comments (7)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Domestic, Appliances, Music, 1960s

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