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Chief Job Title
Jane Gilbert was recently appointed as Miami’s first ever Chief Heat Officer. Until recently, she was the city’s Chief Resilience Officer (that too, the first, I should add).
Excerpts from an interview with The Washington Post:
Q: Why is it important to have someone designated as the chief heat officer?
A: While I was chief resilience officer, we did our own climate adaptation strategy. As part of that, we went out to various neighborhoods sharing maps and data on the impact of sea level rise, storm surge and heat, and then just spent time getting people in small groups talking about what their biggest concerns were. Heat came up a lot.
Q: But heat is such a fact of life in Miami. What makes that deserving of a chief officer?
A: Miami knows heat — we’re hot and humid a good part of the year. A heat index of 105 degrees is about when you’ve hit dangerous levels, when people could really suffer from heatstroke.
We currently have an average of seven days where we get over that heat index for a couple of hours. By mid-century, we’re going to have 88 of those days — that’s more than 10 times as many days.
Reportedly Married
It says something when, hours after being reported elsewhere, neither The Guardian nor the BBC could definitively state whether Boris Johnson got married or not, and Downing Street declined to comment, yet colleagues of Johnson tweeted their greetings.
The Death of Bill Shakespeare
In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop on Thursday night when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died five months after receiving the Covid vaccine.
The gaffe of, well, Shakespearean proportions happened after Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on Canal 26, mixed up the Bard with William “Bill” Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world to get the Pfizer vaccine.
Based on what I could piece together, this is what she seems to have said:
We've got news that has stunned all of us given the greatness of this man. We're talking about William Shakespeare and his death. We'll let you know how and why it happened.
As we all know, he’s one of the most important writers in the English language – for me the master. Here he is. He was the first man to get the coronavirus vaccine. He’s died in England at the age of 81.
KFC Dubbing
From France: to mark the reopening of cinemas, KFC released a spot in which the sounds across a selection of movie scenes are replaced with the sound of crispy munching on KFC goodies. You’ll find it hard to believe what you hear.
“Have you tried choosing richer parents?”
From Canada: a crowdfunded billboard campaign uses sarcasm to draw attention to “out-of-control” home prices.
An Offer for Robert De Niro
Madrid Fusion describes itself as “the world’s premier global gastronomy congress”. For its 2021 edition, the people behind it have put out a public “offer” to Robert De Niro, to be part of the advertising campaign. But instead of a fee, they’re promising him an “upscale” tasting menu, cooked by five top chefs who have over 20 Michelin stars between them. In their words:
Like Capone you teach us that “You can get much further with a kind Word and a gun than with a kind word alone” We offer you a kind word and a 23 star menu.
They also put out a tweet to Ryan Reynolds:
Ryan, if Robert says no, you can even put an ad in our ad. And enjoy a great meal too.
Home Gatherings
A light-hearted new spot from Heineken highlights some of the challenges in attending home parties in the present times.
Ball Talk
Balls are at the heart of two new pun-filled spots for men’s grooming brand, Manscaped.
Spot 1- Lawn Mower® 4.0
Spot 2- Ultra Smooth Package
Of Watermelons, Porcupines and Poop
It says something about the vivid imagination of the people behind this commercial that they could draw comparisons between all of the above, and more.
Shrek at 20
An extract from an opinion piece in The Guardian by someone who thinks it was “a terrible movie”.
Shrek has an outhouse with a working toilet.
It is not part of the film’s cynical brand of “irreverence” that an ogre’s latrine is supported by modern plumbing. And it’s certainly not consistent with the hygiene of a swamp-dwelling beast who bathes in mud, brushes his teeth in slime and boasts of a killer weed rat stew. But after our lime-green hero literally wipes his ass with a fairytale ending, it was apparently decided that the film needed that emphatic flushing sound before the Smash Mouth single All Star kicked in and the introductory montage could commence.
Wasteminster
An outstanding new spot for Greenpeace visualises a single day’s accumulation of the UK’s plastic waste being dumped on Downing Street. According to this report:
Using a mix of real-time data, bespoke VFX data simulation and high-end CGI modelling they created the hero imagery and accurate physics of 1.8 million kilograms of individual plastic items falling on Boris Johnson and an exact digital replica of Downing Street using library photographs and satellite imagery, showcasing incredible detail - right down to the interior light fittings.
Refill Your Brain
Last week, images and reports surfaced online, of a strange and baffling print campaign from Thailand for Ovaltine. In the words of one reviewer:
They appear to show some kind of horror-movie scenario, perhaps one in the same vein as the infamously disgusting film Human Centipede. Certainly not the wholesome kind of thing one usually associates with Ovaltine.
If that wasn’t strange enough, one-by-one, the images were pulled down from most websites that they appeared on. While I have no idea what prompted that, here are links where you can still check out those images:
Bear Sidekick
From The Guardian:
For those who have not been following this story, here’s an extract from an earlier report:
The campaign had hyped the moment by promising the 1,000lb creature as a “special guest”. As part of his Meet the Beast Bus Tour, Cox appeared at a podium in front of a vehicle emblazoned with his face next to that of a ferocious-looking bear. In reality, however, the animal appeared fairly uninterested in politics, lumbering around a few feet behind Cox before flopping on to the ground, panting heavily. It did not offer an endorsement, unless not eating the candidate counts as support.
Japan Image Upload Laws
If someone were to post an unauthorised image of a person on a porn site, what are the charges that could be brought against that person? Last week, Tokyo police arrested a porn site operator who had posted images of female athletes on his website and apparently all that they charged him with, was copyright infringement. Extracts from a report that provides a possible explanation:
It is difficult to take legal action since there is no law against nonconsensual filming or photo-taking in Japan, and such acts, including taking images of people in nude or sexual situations, are only punishable under nuisance-prevention ordinances set by prefectural governments.
Missing Person Reporters
From Thailand: a new campaign uses Deepfake technology in what may be one of its most positive applications so far.
A Washing Machine for the Whole Family
From Brazil: what looks like an ad for a too-good-to-be-true product morphs into a campaign with a message.
Revived
This is a superbly crafted, emotion-packed 5-minute short, that is all the more amazing as it is a student film. The icing on the cake is an audacious twist at the end, as it reveals itself to be a spec ad.
Methane in a Jar
Yet another commercial about someone who takes eco-sensitivity to a bizarre extreme. Yet another commercial from the Philippines with a freaky premise.
One Hell of a Ride
From Egypt: a masterfully-visualised PSA that makes its point with brutal efficiency.
It Can Wait
What’s the best thing since sliced bread? How about toasted sliced bread? At least that’s what it would seem from this humorous new ad for British bread maker, Warburtons.
Loving Homes For Plastic
An audacious new campaign from canned water brand, Liquid Death, proposes ‘recycling’ in a whole new way.
The Truth About George Clooney
George Clooney is a big Brad Pitt fan and a terrible roommate- that’s what this wacky ad would like you to believe.
Asking China to “get the f-out”
On Monday, soon after the Philippines officially protested China’s intrusion in its territorial waters, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Teddy Locsin Jr., took to Twitter with a more direct, and unusual message for China:
China, my friend, how politely can I put it? Let me see… O…GET THE F*** OUT. What are you doing to our friendship? You. Not us. We’re trying. You. You’re like an ugly oaf forcing your attentions on a handsome guy who wants to be a friend; not to father a Chinese province.
Parking Obsession
For the last six years I’ve kept a spreadsheet listing every parking spot I’ve used at the local supermarket in a bid to park in them all. This week I completed my Magnum Opus!
Thus begins a tweet thread that went viral this week, and caught a lot of media attention.
Here’s an extract from the coverage by The New York Times:
Michelangelo spent four years painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Tolstoy devoted six to “War and Peace,” and the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan took more than twice that to erect the Taj Mahal.
But did any of them park in every single spot of their local grocery store?
Maybe they would have, given the chance and the existence of a Publix or Tesco. Instead the feat was achieved by Gareth Wild, a 39-year-old production director who assiduously took up space, in one spot after another at the local Sainsbury’s of his London suburb, until he had used 211 parking spots over six years.