Cynical-C Blog

A health club in the Netherlands is setting up scales in seats at bus stops to shame you into going to their gym.

Why that is Vince Offer:

In 1999 Offer released the Underground Comedy Movie to scathing reviews. Lawrence Van Gelder of the New York Times described the movie as “a series of sketches built around subjects like masturbation, defecation, alienation, urination, necrophilia, voyeurism, casual brutality and mockery of the unfortunate.” He added that Offer “makes the common mistake of equating the recognition of comic potential for comedy itself. For the successful, talent bridges the gap, but here it is absent.”[1] DVDs of the film were marketed via television infomercial.

The film also generated several lawsuits. Offer filed a copyright-infringement suit against Peter and Bobby Farrelly and Twentieth Century Fox, claiming that 14 scenes in There’s Something About Mary were taken from his own film. The Farrelly brothers responded, “We’ve never heard of him, we’ve never heard of his movie, and it’s all a bunch of baloney.”[2] In addition, Offer sued Anna Nicole Smith for breach of contract, alleging that Smith had agreed to appear in Underground Comedy Movie but backed out, claiming it would hurt her career.[3]

In 2004, Offer, an ex-Scientologist, sued the Church of Scientology, alleging it had declared him a criminal and had urged its members to “write false and malicious reports against him.” Offer claimed that the church’s action against him caused him to lose a successful business, as many of his employees were Scientologists who quit upon learning of the church’s actions.

I’ve seen the ShamWow commercial approximately 1.21 jigowatts times but I hadn’t seen the SlapChop one:

I guess the only question that remains, besides “What’s a jigowatt?” is why the hell is he wearing a headset?

Nothing says class like turning a tragedy into a marketing opportunity:

Could a bedside shotgun rack have saved jennifer hudson’s family from tragic death?

Chicago, IL (MMD Newswire) October 28, 2008 — Tragedy strikes in a Chicago home leaving 3 people dead and an Oscar winner forced to identify the bodies of her family.

Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother were gunned down in their home Friday. Could an invaluable device have saved their lives? It’s called The BackUp and it is a bedside shotgun rack.

Everyday, there are over 8,000 home invasions in America, many resulting in assault, rape, and murder. That’s according to a report by the US Department of Justice.

Whether it is someone known or a stranger entering the home, too many people in this country are paying with their lives during these home invasions. The Hudson family is just one of far too many Americans gunned down in their own home.

(via Slog)

Blog of Hilarity rounds up some of the weirdest McDonald’s commercials.

From AdWeek:

Just as Microsoft and Crispin Porter + Bogusky tried to play down the wreck of the HMS Conquistador by quickly launching their new “I’m a PC” spots, another PR snafu has swept the blogosphere. Looking at data embedded in Microsoft’s online photos from the campaign, a savvy Flickr user found that the images were created using Adobe software on a Macintosh (versus, say, Microsoft Expression Studio on a PC).

From here.

(via My2SecondShelfLife)

Three Indian Airlines battle for billboard superiority.

From DesignVerb.com:

What happens when a mayor decides to ban advertisements in a vibrant city of 11 million people with more than 8,000 billboards? Impossible, insane, absurd, or just plain genius? Well this is what happened this past January when mayor Gilberto Kassabs “Clean City” law was introduced in Sao Paulo Brazil banning any form of advertising throughout the city to rid of “visual clutter”. (reminds me of the “advertising is graffiti” stunt, or my dislike for posters in Milan)

(via Ektopia)

From eWeek.com:

People will click on anything.

That was evidenced by the 409 people who clicked on an ad that offers infection for those with virus-free PCs. The ad, run by a person who identifies himself as security professional Didier Stevens,…

…Stevens, who says he works for Contraste Europe, a branch of the IT consultancy The Contraste Group, has been running his Google Adwords campaign for six months now and has received 409 hits. Stevens has done similar research in the past, such as finding out how easy it is to land on a drive-by download site when doing a Google search.

In a posting about the drive-by download campaign, Stevens says that he got the idea after picking up a small book on Google Adwords at the library and finding out how easy and cheap it is to set up an ad.

“You can start with a couple of euros per month,” he said. “And that gave me an idea: this can be used with malicious [intent]. It’s a way to get a drive-by download site on the first page of a search.”