Durex Erectometer

From Australia: a new campaign for Durex features a giant, mobile billboard that will display a real-time vaccination summary across New South Wales. 

From a tongue-in-cheek report:

Rising and pointing to key vaccination milestones, the Erectometer’s erect Durex condom will reach ‘vax climax’ once 80 per cent of residents are double-jabbed.

Set to cruise the streets of Sydney between in anticipation of free-DOM Day, the Durex Erectometer will stop off at locations along the city’s cheekiest ‘root’, pulling into Homebush, Mona Vale, Balls Head Bay, Pleasure Point and more.

While the Erectometer is romping the city’s streets, Durex will also be giving away free condoms nationally to Aussies who show their full vaccination passport.

Henry Turgoose, marketing director, Reckitt Health said that with increased freedoms expected in just a few weeks, Durex is predicting a ‘sexplosion’ in Sydney, similar to Durex UK who saw a 10 per cent increase in condom sales once restrictions were relaxed.

The Future of Male Contraception?

From the explanation on the Dyson Awards website:

COSO is an ultrasound-based, reversible and hormone-free male contraceptive device for home use…

The user puts water into the device up to the indicated mark… the water is heated up to operating temperature. The user spreads his legs and sits down to place the testicles in the device. The ultrasound process continues for a few minutes. The remaining time can be monitored in real time via the COSO app.

So far, the procedure has been applied to animals. Therefore, the technical parameters are hypothetically transferred to humans.

Take the Money and Run

Excerpts from a news report:

A Danish artist was given $84,000 by a museum to use in a work of art. When he delivered the piece he was supposed to make, it was not as promised. Instead, the artist, Jens Haaning, gave the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark two blank canvases and said they were titled “Take the Money and Run.”

Mass Brawls after COVID Restrictions Abruptly Lifted

Guess where?  Norway!

To quote the outgoing Prime Minister:

We shall not have strict (coronavirus) measures unless they are professionally justified. People must be allowed to live as they wish.

Link to full report

Opportunity doesn’t do borders

A new spot for HSBC that stands out for its creative depiction of borders.

Link to video

The ideal reporter to cover fuel shortage

Link to video report

No Internet, Still Cheating

Follow-up to yesterday’s post about anti-cheating measures at an exam in India.  Police uncovered a racket involving candidates trying to cheat by wearing flip-flops with “bluetooth devices fitted inside the sole”. 

So what next are the authorities planning to do to stop cheating?  To quote one police officer:

In the next phase of the exam, nobody can go in with slippers, shoes or socks into the exam centre.

Link to full report

Second Opinion

A 2 minute sketch- part of the ‘Lowest Common Denominator’ series of satirical shorts.

Link to video

Controversy in Cumming

The sort of headlines that can be hard to read with a straight face…

No Internet, No Cheating

From a news report out of India:

Mobile internet and SMS will be snapped in five districts of Rajasthan for 12 hours today as the state holds an important exam to select teachers for government schools, the state government has said. The move is to prevent cheating in exams, officials have said.

Hinting and Shaming

In its new campaign, poverty relief charity Concern Worldwide takes a dig at the super rich for not donating enough.  Its solution, though, is somewhat head-scratching.

Link to video

Getting a Leg Up

From an Oklahoma news report:

Kevion Hooks was arrested for an armed robbery in which he took a prosthetic leg from the victim, police say.

According to the Tulsa Police Department, the victim stated that Hooks came up to him with a large metal spike, took the victim's backpack and also took the victim's prosthetic leg. Hooks even asked the victim the worth of each item he was stealing.

When Hooks was apprehended, they found him with the victim's leg strapped to his head.

Ad Space in Your Home

In a campaign that has the markings of a prank promotion, beer brand Pabst Blue Ribbon is offering to pay you for putting up ads in your home.  That is, if you go by this tweet.  The campaign video has a similar message but, in all fairness, it’s hard to take it seriously, especially in the way it starts with a ‘FBI warning’.

If you go by the campaign website, I’d say that the nature of the prank appears to be, more or less, confirmed.  Sure, the basic offer is there, but most of the choices are too bizarre to be true and, largely,“sold out”.  The only space choices not “sold out” are the digital ones such as your desktop background and wi-fi network name.  However, I could be wrong because according to this report, all the “sold out” items were claimed within minutes, but “PBR will restock daily through this Friday, September 24”.

Men caught smuggling KFC into lockdown-hit Auckland

From a BBC report:

NZ police have made a bizarre arrest after a pair of alleged gang associates were caught trying to enter Auckland with a boot full of KFC chicken and tens of thousands of dollars.

The men were charged with breaching the country's tough Covid-19 rules.

Under Auckland's strict Level 4 lockdown, all restaurants, including take-away services, remain closed.

The men are not the first New Zealanders whose fast-food cravings have landed them in trouble with authorities. Last week a 20-year-old man was charged after he posted a video on Tiktok showing him leaving Auckland and purchasing a large amount of food from McDonalds.

Runner disqualified… after accidentally winning

From one of the news reports on the incident:

Omar Ahmed never expected to win the Bristol half-marathon on Sunday. For a start, he hadn't even entered it.

The Birmingham-based runner had put his name down for the 10km race, which was held on the same day for the first time this year.

After setting off with the first wave of runners — which included elite athletes from both races — Omar took a wrong turn where the two routes diverged.

He only discovered his mistake at the six mile (9.5km) mark of the 22km event.

“I asked someone when I reached the sixth mile, ‘is this a 10k’”, he told the Bristol Post.

“They said ‘no, it’s a half-marathon,’ so after that I slowed down a bit.”

He might have slowed, slightly, but he still did enough to cross the line first, and set a new PB of 1:03:08 — almost five minutes ahead of Chris Thompson in second place.

However, bad news was to follow for the accidental winner, when race organisers subsequently disqualified him.

“Rules are rules and in this case they say we have to disqualify Omar,” Paul Foster, chief executive of The Great Run Company, was quoted as saying by the BBC.

$50,000 Bond for 43-cent ‘Theft’

From a report on a Pennsylvania news website:

Joseph Sobolewski stopped at a convenience store in Perry County, Pennsylvania last month where he saw a sign for 20-ounce Mountain Dew bottles: 2 for $3.

He grabbed a bottle, slapped $2 on the counter and walked out.

What he didn’t know was a single bottle was $2.29, not $1.50. So he had shorted the store 29 cents plus tax, or 43 cents total.

The store called police, who tracked him down. Pennsylvania State police officers charged him with a felony, locked him up on $50,000 cash-only bond. He’s facing the possibility of up to seven years in prison.

Faster than Twitter

Strange as it may sound, that’s how Honda France is promoting its megascooter, the Forza 750.  The basis for the claim is that in a test run, the Forza covered a distance of 100 metres in less time than it took for a tweet to be delivered to the Honda France account.

Link to campaign video (French, no subtitles)

History, not for the squeamish

A new spot for the National Museum, Prague takes a bewildering approach to promote visiting it.

Link to video

Backside Story

Dutch designer clothing company, G-Star RAW has released a line of ‘hardcore denim’ that is inspired by, and named after Snoop Dogg’s recent hit, ‘Say it Witcha Booty’.  What’s more, to promote the collection, the company has roped in Snoop for a music-video commercial that it describes as “a creative celebration of all denim booties”.

Link to video

Biden Button

A U.S. senator is in the news for asking the Secretary of State about the identity of the person in the White House who had the authority to press a button and “cut off the President’s speaking ability and sound.”

I guess there are some who wish that there was a such a button for times such as yesterday when Biden forgot the name of the Australian Prime Minister, and instead referred to him as “that fella down under”. 

COVID makes fugitive surrender… after 30 years

As reported by Sky News:

A fugitive who is alleged to have used a hacksaw blade and bolt cutters to escape from prison nearly 30 years ago has given himself up - because a city's COVID lockdown made him homeless.

Darko Desic walked into a police station in Sydney because his work as a handyman had been hit by the Australian city's coronavirus restrictions.

Now 64, he surrendered at Dee Why Police Station on Sunday and was denied bail when he appeared in court on Tuesday, charged with escaping from lawful custody in 1992, according to a police statement.

Sydney's lockdown, which started in June, had cost Desic his cash-in-hand work as a labourer and handyman, police sources told Sydney's Daily Telegraph and Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“He slept on the beach on Saturday night and said, ‘stuff it, I'll go back to prison where there’s a roof over my head’,” a source told the newspaper.

RIP Norm Macdonald

The Animal (2001): Mob scene

The Day The Moon Came To Earth

A gorgeous, animated 1 minute short from Sky.

Link to video

Chocolates and National Security

From a statement attributed to Hong Kong Secretary for Security, Chris Tang:

Many people may wonder what the problem is with having one more hair clip, one more piece of chocolate.  These signify privilege within prison walls.  By smuggling these things inside… [to] recruit followers and build influence, [they] create hatred towards the government and endanger national security.

Chuck Energy

From Norway: industrial giant Aker ASA has come up with a wacky way to affirm its environmental commitments.  It has a new commercial that stars Chuck Norris, living up to the ‘facts’ and memes that made the action hero an internet sensation. 

Link to video

COVID Impersonation

From a Vietnamese news report:

Authorities in southern Vietnam’s Binh Duong Province on Wednesday fined a man being treated at a COVID-19 quarantine facility for impersonating a doctor and telling inpatients to go home.

2021 Ig Nobels

A few of the winner citations:

Economics Prize
“for discovering that the obesity of a country’s politicians may be a good indicator of that country's corruption.”

Medicine Prize
“for demonstrating that sexual orgasms can be as effective as decongestant medicines at improving nasal breathing.”

Peace Prize
“for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches to the face.”

Biology Prize
“for analyzing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other modes of cat–human communication.”

Ecology Prize
“for using genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries.”

Chemistry Prize
“for chemically analyzing the air inside movie theaters, to test whether the odors produced by an audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex, antisocial behavior, drug use, and bad language in the movie the audience is watching.”

Transportation Prize
“for determining by experiment whether it is safer to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside-down.”

Link to full report

Literature Punishment

As reported by The Guardian last week:

A former student who downloaded almost 70,000 white supremacist documents and bomb-making instructions has avoided a prison sentence “by the skin of his teeth” after being told to read classic literature by Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare and Hardy.

Ben John, 21, from Lincoln, a former student at De Montfort University in Leicester, has to return to court every four months to be tested on his reading, Judge Timothy Spencer QC said.

After making John promise not to research any more rightwing material, the judge continued: “Have you read Dickens? Austen? Start with Pride and Prejudice and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Think about Hardy. Think about Trollope.

“On 4 January you will tell me what you have read and I will test you on it. I will test you and if I think you are [lying to] me you will suffer.”

Dead Relief

From Australia: laxative brand Prunelax has launched a new campaign laced with irreverent humour, intended to “reinforce” that it is “the custodian of true relief”.

Link to ‘Casket’ spot

RIP Michael Kenneth Williams

The Wire: Brother Mouzone confronts Omar

Typecast- a 3 minute short for The Atlantic

One Too Many Fakes

From India: at a press conference to announce the arrest of a fake doctor, the police end up arresting a fake journalist as well, who was “suspiciously” filming the event.

Link to report

Takeaway

In this amusing spot for Barclaycard, a real-life London restaurateur plays a version of himself, who is swept off his feet by a chance encounter with Helena Bonham Carter.

Link to video

A Stone Too Far

The fanciful journey of a skimming stone is at the heart of a charming spot for Fox’s Sweets.

Link to video

Sextember

From France: condom brand Eden Gen has launched a sex education campaign that it explains thus:

Between National Geographic and porn, the sex education of Generation Z has a huge gap… two extremes of discovery of sexuality which are both far from reality. Teenagers deserve that we speak to them about sex with frankness. Especially when we know that for almost half of them porn has played a determining role in their learning of sexuality. A provocative subject among young people: full of misunderstandings, complexes, imitations and uncertainties.

In order to protect young people in their first steps towards discovering sexuality, Eden Gen intends to demystify the prejudices that they can have about sex by deconstructing, in a fun and playful way, the preconceived notions conveyed by pornographic culture. Through 4 mini-films, graphics and a poster campaign, Eden Gen relieves the worries of young people by reminding them that sex is not a question of size, duration or performance.

Link to mini-films

Two Cheeks Notice

That’s how someone summed up this graphic resignation letter, shared on Reddit.

Subway Floating Sub

From New Zealand: a new spot for Subway features a nine-metre long ‘sub’, sailing on the iconic Lake Wakatipu.

Link to video

Link to the behind-the-scenes video