Now in Technicolor

Colour me impressed:

Every Man Has A D-Spot

Davidoff may not make the best cigars, but they've got cigar-lovers down to a 'T' with this series:

Sales Bitch...er...Pitch

We all know women love shopping. I'm not being sexist. I'm just stating a law of nature.

It also follows that sales would be a beloved phenomenon. The sale as an outlet for female aggression has been well-documented in academic and time-tested popular culture mediums, for example, the films Clueless and Confessions of a Shopaholic.

With these associations ingrained into our society's brains, this is how Horse and Hound has decided to interpret them:

What does it seem like they're calling you, ladies? Remember...I didn't say it.

Please direct all angry emails to Horse and Hound.

Thanks for stopping by!

The KandyMan

Sweet Sweet Love

To satiate your sweet tooth on this fine Monday, I have for you not an ad, but controversial packaging on....whadyaknow....CANDY! Take a look:

My cousin sent me this article on the stir the wrapping's caused in the UK.

Now, I'll tell you truthfully, KandyAddicts--to me it looks like these deliciously tantalizing, saliva-inducing, mouth-inhabiting sweeties are going at it like hippies on LSD in the 60s (no offense, hippies; we love you).

Not that I had any doubt from looking at the thing, but for those of you who do, just take a closer look. They've even put in the lines to show them girating movements. As if the positioning itself wasn't enough.

Speaking of positioning, don't look too hard, ladies and gents. There's somethings candy can't teach you.

Sometimes you have to get offline and explore the world for yourselves!

Until next time,

The KandyMan

Camel What?

Another Monday; another ad for you thirsty, thirty or so kandy addicts (yep that's how many regular visitors I get. Can you tell your bloody friends how awesome this site is? Don't you people have friends?)

Anyway, I'll put the emotional blackmail aside for now and throw this ad from Honda at you:

At first glance, this ad from Honda is pretty clever!

An essential message for their business is being advertised: use only Honda parts for Honda vehicles. And they seemingly worked the message into an ad with humour, fun and even a bit of the constantly female-endorsed 'cute factor' ('cuz who doesn't love camels (right, Joe?)).

Very nice and light hearted.

Makes sense, right?

I thought so. But then I got to thinking about the ad, and my brain, as it tends to do, started smashing the implications of the ad around all four corners of my otherwise empty head...

You know what it came up with? This is actually a pretty controversial ad!

Honda, what are you REALLY saying here?

1) What exactly happened to this dude to make him need spare body parts? (Did he crash one of your motorbikes? That's something I should definitely not be thinking about that after seeing your ad!)

2) The guy has replaced his for-some-reason damaged body parts with animal parts, yes?

3) So Honda, what you're saying is you do not agree that this man should use animal parts to replace his implied non-functioning body parts? Ok, fair enough.

4) Honda instead suggests that one should use original parts--does that mean cloning? Stem cells? Or going to the underground body part market?

I came out thinking Honda vehicles will make you lose body parts, and Honda supports cloning, stem cell regeneration, etc for you to get back to your good old pre-Honda self.

Maybe I'm being silly, but this is what I thought about after seeing that ad. And ads are all about manipulating thought and creating associations in favour of your product and brand.

And Honda, what I saw was disaster...

Seeing your ad was love at first sight.

But then after living with it for a while, I became more and more wary.

You make me feel as though I may now know what married people are always on about...

Tell me, am I overthinking it and knocking Honda for the sake of it? Is this actually a pretty good ad?

I can't tell.

Leave a comment with your thoughts below.

Monday Uppers

It's Monday, people!

Wakey up, and start your week off right. With a great ad from Nescafe...

This is probably one of my favourite ads I've come across so far since becoming a kandy-addict.

Visually awesome. I'm pretty sure my marijuana-inclined followers could probably spend a good few hours staring at this (until they realise it's an ad for coffee, which then makes them think of food, followed by, "ooh, munchines, dude!" and eventually forgetting the ad ever existed).

Who says sleep is unproductive? They've turned a buncha zzzz's into some pretty damn impressive advertising.

So simple of an idea, Nescafe deserves a trail of corporate, 9-5er, mindless zombies drawn into buying buckets full of their coffee after this one.

Not that corporate 9-5ers are mindless zombies, I just meant those tough Monday mornings sometimes need some sprucing up (but then again, that's not to say them corporate 9-5ers aren't mindless zombies...)

Happy Monday,

KandyMan

Burn baby, burn

The last ad I showed you guys with Olay and Peter Pan got me thinking.
I didn't really write much about it. So what was so good about it? It didn't just show us what the product does, it implied. But that's not the impressive part.

I mean, any company can throw a bag of cash on a hot ass celeb's lap and say, "You love our product, don't you?" to make their tongue roll out and have them pant and nod harder than a lhasa apso with its head out a car's window. Though that may still be effective, because, like a game of telephone, when it gets to your eyes and ears the message becomes: "Use this. Obviously you're not as skinny, pretty or sexy as this hottie...but you could be," it's not exactly creatve, no is it?

But some ads take the time to think about the product, the brand and come come up with something hot.

This one by Tabasco is brilliant. You can't help but think up the caption yourself:
"Tabasco. It's hot as hell!"

We get a little bit of sex appeal with the firey red lips. The tattooed tongue's pretty cool and not only gets you wondering what kind of girl this is, but it burns an association of the product into our heads.

Even the placement of the Tabasco bottle next to the mouth tells us something practical about the product.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, we have ad perfection. And when this ad dies, it's going to ad heaven.

Forever Young...

I thought I'd keep in the vein of female-targeted ads after last post, and here we have one from Olay.

No caption, the image says it all.

Props to Olay for this one. You guys got it right.

Creative and simple, the use of this iconic pop fiction figure to market your product is pure genius.

Just don't go Alphaville on us for your next TV spot, k?

The Blood Test

No matter how comfortable they claim their product makes a woman feel, I am always left feeling awkwardly uncomfortable after a feminine hygiene commercial.

It's not the permanently plastered facial expression of euphoria on a woman prancing around doing yoga like she actually believes she's a mystic Indian nor the alleged everywoman who goes synchronized swimming with her other girlfriends because that's just what she does during her downtime that's bothersome. That's all fine.

The problem is, it's just that I have an over-active imagination. And when they show me those serene images and then flash their product, I quickly get to thinking, wait...what would it be like if they WEREN'T "always fresh" in that situation? What's the opposite of that picture? And it's ads like the one below that get me thinking.

When I first saw this ad, I grunted out a laugh and thought, "Hah, clever." That was short-lived. Quicker than a nerd can say "Harry Potter," my imagination went into overtime and worked out the implications and consequences of a vampire with tampon teeth. Know what it came up with? "Ew. Wait. What blood is he sucking?"

Sorry, ladies, maybe I'm just still immature. I'll be the first to admit it.

So, maybe the mature thing to do is to recognize that Vampire-->Blood-->Menstruation is just an obvious progression...

What do you guys think? Let it all soak in, form an opinion and leave a comment to let us know what you think.

Ladies and Germs

This one makes you think, huh.

"Whose hand are you holding?"

Back when I was at university, I'd go down to the Student Union Building and use the public computers out there. Check my mail, Facebook a little, recheck where my classes were because I hadn't gone in a month...

Now, I know we had a pretty decent Student Society budget, so I was a little confused when, with the stroke of each key, it was like the keyboard was falling apart bit by bit. Chips flying this way and that way like a bunch of tweens right before a Miley Cyrus concert. But they're not what you'd think at first. They're worse.

Those weren't just wear-and-tear flakes chipping off the keys, they were flecks of crusty, dirty dirty mould, dried food, probably some solidified bodily fluids--and who knows what else--chipping off as I typed. Dirty dirty hippies. (Probably not, but I'm blaming them anywyay.)

Moral of the story, wash your hands! And Dettol reminds us pretty well in this image why we need to remember to.

So anyway, if my story wasn't gross enough for you, look at the holes going through those hanging arms. Brr. Aren't they freaky? Plus one of 'em has a band-aid. Shiver.

I feel dirty. I'm going to go try and wash this whole post off me.

Have a hygienic day,

The KandyMan

So Glue Me

In today's post, I wanted to show you something in complete contrast to the unimaginative and poorly thought out Burger King ad I showed you last time. Here's "Instant hold."

Unlike that ridiculous BK ad, this one by super-glue brand Pattex is totally tubular in its creativity and imagination.

It pokes at the viewer's imagination to create the situation frame-by-frame, and the picture that we ourselves create effectively communicates the supposed potency of the product. The association sticks.

For me, I can just picture Speedy Gonzales off-frame winding up, shouting 'Ariba, 'riba!' and then zooming into the frame about to grab that little piece of cheese and zoom off, when suddenly he looks back with a wide-eyed, puzzled expression and sees his precious precious feet stuck solid. Speedy meets his match. Then WHAM! A newspaper comes down on his cocky little Mexican ass. Hard. See ya, Speed.

Ok, maybe that went a little further than what they were trying to show (and probably TMI on my mouse issues), but you get the picture.

Simple, creative, stimulates the imagination and communicative; I'm glued to this ad. Good job, Pattex.

What did it make you, dear KandyLovers, think? Leave a your thoughts below.

Gratefulness

A big thanks to fellow-blogger and fashionista extraordinaire, Leia, for my new AdKandy banner and invaluable blogging tips!

Check out here blog!: http://hifashionsl.blogspot.com/

Thanks Leia!

-KandyMan

Virgins & Blowjobs

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Welcome!

Hello, World.

I have here for you today a soothing cure for your blog-battered eyes--my very first foray into public blogdom. Take a screen grab; it'll be worth something some day (and make sure you date-stamp).

I've held off sharing my semi-illuminating opinions for quite some time. This is somewhat due to the fact that I didn't want to fall into the same category as every other Tom, Dick and tween Britney who think that the minutiae of their existence is so profound that they are compelled to share with the billions of internet-connected individuals around the world the timings of their bowel movements (thanks Twitter!) and the name of the song to which they cried after their boyfriend said Hannah Montana sucks and the accompanying catharsis in the form of a pornographic YouTube video in the guise of an 'I just love dancing' striptease.

But it was also because I am always thinking of you, dear readers. I thought that you deserve better than another half-baked, I'll-post-once-in-a-blue-moon blog concept (blogcept). So I gave myself time to come up with an idea for which I would have sustainable enthusiasm. Nice, right?

Well, apparently all good things come to those who wait, because eureka! Lo and behold I have come up with such an idea.

I humbly introduce to you, AdKandy!

AdKandy is for those of us who appreciate advertisements as a creative form--or at the very least, as a force of cultural influence. They can be sweet; they can be sour. They can make us feel good; they can make us feel sick. They can be savoured one at a time, or we can devour them in a successive blast.

So, here I've made--just for you--a venue to eat up ads like candy.

AdKandy is a platform to look at, appreciate and discuss interesting advertisements (they'll all be print ads for now), making observations, cultural connections, parallels, critiques (or whatever else they may incite in that profound consciousness of yours whose outpourings you just can't resist sharing with billions of others) along the way.

Sure, we can demonize ads like the majority of the population would have us do. Or we can accept the Truth. Some ads are fun to look at. Accept it. Love it. Devour it. Eat AdKandy.

Yours sincerely,

The KandyMan

PS - To request an autographed copy of the screen grab you took above, write to me at kandyman (at) adkandy (dot) com.