Ice cream tragedies
Ice cream brand CVT employs high drama to point out the downside of drippy ice cream.
Spot 1: Lake House
Spot 2: Lottery Ticket
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Ben Stiller makes a bubbly move
The actor has launched his own brand of soda with a spot in which he pitches the soda alongside wacky interjections by Justin Theroux.
PS: As one might expect, the humour extends elsewhere across the promotion. This is the fine print laid out for for anyone considering signing up for email updates, on the product website:
Recipients acknowledge that, despite stylistic choices in copywriting, no actual carbonation, bubbles, or sparkling matter can be transferred via the medium of email. Should bubbles appear in your inbox, you are advised to shut down your computer immediately and seek spiritual counsel.
Coyote ugly, explained
That is, as explained by the inimitable Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida, at a recent news conference.
Willem Dafoe is delightfully expressive about Laphroaig
The single malt whiskey brand has kicked off its collaboration with the actor, with a whimsical 3 minute film that doubles as a showcase of Dafoe’s dramatic flair.
Sausage roll-inspired design
A bean bag and a clutch—inspired by the iconic sausage roll of UK bakery chain Greggs.
Arguing over pets leads couple to seek divorce
To quote from a report out of India:
The couple bonded over their shared love for pets before marriage. The husband, a resident of Bhopal, already had a pet dog, a rabbit, and a fish tank, while the wife, originally from Uttar Pradesh, brought her cat along after their wedding.
Initially, the couple lived together without much trouble, but soon clashes between the animals sparked disputes between the couple.
According to the wife, her husband’s dog “continuously barks at her cat, leaving it scared and stressed, sometimes even refusing to eat.” The husband, however, alleged that his wife’s cat “often sits near the fish tank and stares at the fish” and has “turned violent towards the dog multiple times.”
As arguments over their pets escalated, the couple decided to seek divorce. The case has now reached the family court.
‘A whole new Disney’
Dutch comedian Arjen Lubach’s roast is brilliant and savage.
Link to video (NSFW)
2025 Ig Nobels
A few of the winner citations:
Peace Prize
“for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language.”
Nutrition Prize
“for studying the extent to which a certain kind of lizard chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza.”
Psychology Prize
“for investigating what happens when you tell narcissists—or anyone else—that they are intelligent.”
Engineering Design Prize
“for analyzing, from an engineering design perspective, how foul-smelling shoes affect the good experience of using a shoe-rack.”
One award that deserves particular mention:
Literature Prize
“for persistently recording and analyzing the rate of growth of one of his fingernails over a period of 35 years.”
So why would this have garnered a ‘literature’ prize? As explained in the Ars Technica coverage:
If you're surprised to see a study on fingernail growth rates under the Literature category, it will all make sense once you read the flowery prose stylings of Dr. Bean [the winner]. He really did keep detailed records of how fast his fingernails grew for 35 years, claiming in his final report that “the nail provides a slowly moving keratin kymograph that measures age on the inexorable abscissa of time.” He sprinkles his observations with ponderous references to medieval astrology, James Boswell, and Moby Dick, with a dash of curmudgeonly asides bemoaning the sterile modern medical teaching methods that permeate “the teeming mass of hope and pain, technical virtuosity, and depersonalization called a ‘health center.’”
Dog poo-filled gold pendant
Dubbed ‘The Poo(ch) Pendant’ it’s an offering from European dog food brand Butternut Box which announced it with this message:
We’ve turned perfect poos into pendants worth £9,500 (yes, really) to show the world that good gut health is worth its weight in gold.
What’s more, the pendants will be handcrafted by a specialist jeweller, with poo from each recipient’s own dog.
Visa for where you don’t want to be
Financial services giant Visa has a new spot that is narrated by Ryan Reynolds and which adds a twist to its tagline.
PS: It seems that Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort was one of the bidders for the Fyre Festival brand. To quote from the tongue-in-cheek press release by LimeWire, announcing the acquisition:
LimeWire secured the Fyre Festival brand after a competitive bidding process that included creative agency Maximum Effort, co-founded by Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds commented, “Congrats to LimeWire for their winning bid for Fyre Fest. I look forward to attending their first event but will be bringing my own palette of water.”
RIP Robert Redford
There’ll be those who remember him for offbeat movies like ‘The Candidate’ or ‘Downhill Racer.’ There will be those who’ll remember him as a great romantic leading man in movies like ‘The Way We Were.’ There will be those who will consider him a great force in the emergence of independent filmmaking. There will be those that will remember ‘Ordinary People’ as an impressive directorial debut. The one thing he has always been is difficult to anticipate. I think he enjoys, in a perverse way, not doing what you expect him to do.
That was the late Sydney Pollack speculating about Redford’s legacy with Variety magazine in 2002.
And here’s a cinematic moment that was unexpected—from Havana (1990), a little-remembered movie, and the last of Redford’s seven collaborations with Pollack as the director. To quote a commenter on Rotten Tomatoes, “Robert Redford looks a bit weathered in this one, but less weathered when he takes on 2 American foxes half his age in a menage a trois”.
Non-stop distress
Chery Australia finds a rather unusual way to promote the driving range of its Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid.
A collector’s anguish
A new spot for KFC Thailand centres on a completist whose torment over missing pieces goes well beyond his own collections. It’s part of a promotion to mark Colonel Sanders’ birthday month with ‘Baby Sanders’ collectible figurines.
Boots at hand
Boots UK finds a surreal way to tell its customers that they’re never too far from medical advice.
Wishes are medicine
Make-A-Wish Canada has a new campaign that features self-recorded videos by sick kids, showing off their prescriptions with innocent charm. But what really elevates those videos is what is written on the prescriptions. To quote the people behind the campaign, “wishes are not just a nice-to-have; they’re an essential part of treatment”.
Links to videos:
Brad Pitt gets ‘directed’ to drink coffee
From Italy: espresso machine brand De’Longhi has released ‘Chapter 3’ of its intriguing commercials starring Brad Pitt and directed by Oscar-nominated/ winning directors. This one’s directed by Taika Waititi. This might explain why, unlike ‘Chapter 1’ (dir: Damien Chazelle) and ‘Chapter 2’ (dir: Bennett Miller), it’s mildly amusing (in a good way). It’s certainly less of a head-scratcher.
Not made by Gordon Ramsay
Burger King has roped in the celebrity chef to endorse its new burger but with a sly twist—he has to admit that he had no hand in creating the burger, and that he wishes that he had.
Loopy layoff insights
From Denmark: A&Til takes an unexpectedly amusing approach to promoting unemployment insurance.
Take Your Sweet Time
The urge to do financial transactions fast, makes us more vulnerable to scammers. To counter this, Bank of New Zealand is encouraging customers to slow down via a marvellously visualised new spot.
Optionally Better?
A new spot for CBOE Global—the company behind the Chicago Board Options Exchange—indulges in what some would consider to be duplicity.
Kung Fries
From Taiwan: McDonald’s has a new campaign that promotes kung-fu techniques to defend one’s packet of fries. At its heart is a spectacularly choreographed 3 minute action short that lists five moves that the protagonist uses to protect her fries. Instructional videos for the moves have been posted on social media, and every McDonald’s Taiwan meal is being served with a tutorial printed on the tray mats. Customers who share their own tales of defending their fries stand a chance to win a fry made of real gold.
When plants play on a band
A Manchester band, Bionic and the Wired, is in the news for a performance that featured a mushroom and two plants, each equipped with bionic arms, playing together.
Getting plants to individually play musical instruments has been at the heart of their efforts for some time now. In their words, “their art explores the intelligence and responsiveness of the natural world by transforming bio-electrical signals into artistic expressions”. The latest staging was, as they put it, “the largest ensemble of fungi and flora ever to perform live” using their bionic technology.
RIP Graham Greene
To quote from one tribute:
He used his body and voice to inhabit the characters and roles he was playing, almost disappearing within them to create someone (or something) wholly original and unseen before. Yet that classic Greene presence remained, with long hair cascading past his shoulders, and a grin so infatuating that it was hard to look away from.
Here’s some of what the man himself had to say about his early impressions of being an actor (after having worked as an audio technician):
I changed into the costume, and they put me in the shade in a nice chair. They brought me food and water. Yeah, not bad. Then somebody came and got me and walked me over to an X on the ground, and I stood there and said what they told me to say. Then they took me back to the chair in the shade and gave me more food, more water. And I thought, geez, I'm living the life of a dog. This is great. I don't have to carry anybody's amplifiers anymore. I don't have to do lights. I don't have to drive halfway across the country for nothing.
Trunk Trucker
The latest in Virgin Media’s ads of animals on the move is probably the most compelling in the series.