Results tagged “commercial”

The animal rights advocates at PETA wanted to run this commercial during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. However, the organization says they were told their "family-friendly announcement against abusing turkeys" didn't meet network standards. "The station asked us to give more information about the cruelty behind turkey slaughter to back up the statements made in the ad. But even after we sent the network this New York Times article chronicling the grisly facts about turkey factory farming, it nixed the ad." They say they had a kid-centric audience in mind when they created it, but we imagine if any kids listened to the ad they might choose to go hungry this Thursday!

You'll recall that last week Transportation Alternatives held their Biking Rules PSA Festival at BAM, featuring 40 PSAs created to promote bike safety and responsible cycling (i.e., not pedaling fiendishly down the sidewalk and running over pedestrians, etc.). The videos competed in two main categories, "Why Biking Rules" and "Street Code." Here's one of the winners in the shorter "Street Code" category, which will be broadcast on local TV, at outdoor summer films, and at cultural venues like BAM. Winners Aldo Arias and Pam Tietze also got a cool two grand, which will buy a lot of magical bike lights.

Next Tuesday night BAM will host the Biking Rules PSA Festival, which will be followed by after-party in the BAM lobby with free beer from Brooklyn Brewery. The event is part of Transportation Alternative's initiative to get scofflaw cyclists to follow certain rules, such as giving pedestrians the right of way and obeying traffic lights. (But what about biking with a belly full of free beer?) Earlier this year, the group solicited imaginative PSAs to help promote their Biking Rules, and received submissions from more than 80 artists and filmmakers. Here's one of our favorites:

The Marijuana Policy Project [MPP] has produced two new TV ads for media markets in key New York Senate districts. The commercials feature patients who have benefited from medical marijuana, but you won't see them here in NYC, because uptight Eisenhower-era local affiliates of ABC, CBS and Fox have declined to broadcast them. Because reefer drives people into homicidal rages, or something! However, one local network, WNBC, has bravely accepted the group's money and is showing the spots, which includes testimonials from radical freaks like Conservative Party member Joel Peacock of Buffalo, who suffers from chronic pain as the result of an accident. In the ad, he says, "It took away the pain. It took away the nausea. I didn't have stomach cramps. I slept. It just did everything my medicine doesn't do. Please, ask your senator to have compassion." Whatever, hippie! In 2007, the state assembly passed a bill to legalize marijuana for medical purposes, but it never made it through the Senate. Watch the ads below:

Okay so we're all familiar with the Verizon eyesore on the banks of the East River, and the fact that it's hate-fuel for those who have to look at it from Brooklyn, but now the company is taking it to the streets, and likely annoying even more of the city. Their never-ending "network is always with you" campaign was filming earlier over near 7th Street and 1st Avenue. Did you see hundreds of red shirts clogging up the East Village today? Can you see them now?

[UPDATE BELOW] You do know that if gay marriage becomes legal in New York, your children will be instantly turned gay by their crusading queer teachers, right? And according to this eye-opening new TV commercial, "it's not just kids who face consequences. The rights of people who believe marriage means a man and a woman will no longer matter. We’ll have to accept gay marriage whether we like it or not." Oppressed straight couples, Albany will never respect your rights if you don't stand up now!

The NYC Department of Health has taken an aggressive approach to promoting the benefits of not smoking. This week, it focused on how a pack of cigarettes will now cost over $9, thanks to a federal excise tax, and offered free nicotine patches for the day to help encourage smokers to break the habit.

On last week's 30 Rock we learned a little bit about Liz Lemon's past life where she pursued acting and starred in (at least one) phone sex commercial that aired in the "Greater Chicagoland" area. NBC has finally offered up the full commercial online—if you had 70 cents for the first minute and 6 cents each additional minute, would you call 1-900-OK-FACE?

This priceless excerpt from a low-budget infomercial for a leather store in New Hartford, NY stars an angry spokesman in an ill-fitting tuxedo going way off-topic in a seemingly improvised rant about how the economic tailspin was caused by Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer's respective obsessions with the White House and hookers. None of it has anything to do with leather... or does it? A sample:

Everybody's crying about the economy... "Oh, my God things are so bad." Well, you know if—not for nothing; this is just a pet peeve—if Hillary Clinton didn't spend a whole year running for President instead of doing something for the state of New York, maybe we would be a little better. If Spitzer wasn't out there popping chicks like Bon Bons, maybe we'd be a little better... I'm not gonna badmouth, but I'm gonna badmouth.

Of all the ads to be blocked from running during the Superbowl, who would have thought it would be PETA's? The organization submitted the below commercial, "which features a bevy of beauties who are powerless to resist the temptation of veggie love"—but NBC came up with a laundry list of edits that would need to be made before they considered airing it. Some of their cuts included: "touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli, rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin, asparagus on her lap appearing as if it is ready to be inserted into vagina"...PETA is making us redder than a rare steak! Here's the commercial that was deeemed too hot for TV:

Burger King's new ad campaign is a series of commercials depicting a taste test between the Whopper and the Big Mac. The twist here is that the taste testers are blessed souls living in areas so remote that they've never even soiled their intestines with Burger King! Yes, such oases do exist—or rather they did, before ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky airlifted in the fast food, as the teaser trailers suggest. The campaign calls them "Whopper Virgins," and AdFreak detects a none-too-subtle whiff of corporate colonialism. And Marilyn Borchardt of Food First tells the Daily News it's insensitive because "the ad's not even acknowledging that there's even hunger in any of these places." (But watch the trailer; they do look hungry!) And if these 141 words here have proven anything, it's that the campaign is already a success.

There's a very notable NY Times obituary today: "Tony Schwartz, a self-taught, sought-after and highly reclusive media consultant who helped create what is generally considered to be the most famous political ad to appear on television, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan."

Heads up, hipsters: Those keffiyeh scarves, long associated with Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian resistance, are officially ‘so over.’ While the choice of keffiyeh as fashion accessory – at least when sported by sweaty, coked-up white kids mincing for Cobra Snake – has about as much political heft as a neon Che Guevara thong, the trend’s death knell has been rung not by a sudden surge in good taste but by divisive food celebrity Rachael Ray.