While You Were Sleeping – August 27: Miley memes and the worst site takeover ever?
Welcome to a new section we’re calling “While You Were Sleeping” which gives you highlights of the media and marketing news that broke overnight.
Ad Week: Damlier forces students to label ad spoof – Following the weekend’s controversy about a Mercedes ad which asked the question: if you could travel back in time and kill Hitler when he was a boy, would you? Daimler has forced a group of students to clearly label their unauthorised ad as a spoof.
“Mercedes parent Daimler is understandably miffed, and forced the students to add blaring disclaimers that identify the project as a spoof. The controversy has helped the clip go viral, with almost 700,000 YouTube views since Friday.”
Ironically, both ” I bought a Jeep” and The murder of the young (and at that point guiltless) Adolph, were both based heavily upon Drama school projects and exercises from 45 years ago to my knowledge.
I played the driver of the car that almost killed Adolph as an 18 year old drama student. The use of an unrelated phrase, similar to “I bought a Jeep,” in a series of dramatic situations, was used in characterisations, playing the intent and the use of improvisation classes in the same era. It’s nice to know that some things never change.
Our conclusion on the Adolph exercise was that , like any puzzle, the outcome will be that a shift allows for another set of rules to take its place, i.e. someone else would have filled , if not Adolph’s shoes, then those of another monster of equal or perhaps more horrible festering.
I acknowledge that the murder car has got more sophisticated and the unrelated line has at least a common reference in these nicely executed contemporary examples.
Here in the South, we love Miley, but she may have gone just a little too far. She’ll have a helluva time finding a date at the next family reunion.