January 27, 2014

Lipton tea without sugar contains sugar

Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 1:59 pm

lipton-tea-evan-amosIrony is alive! Lipton is currently running an ad campaign on TV with Dutch beauty Nicolette van Dam telling her fake mother how ‘regular’ their regular tea is and therefore still tasty. Their regular tea however is anything but regular, Keuringsdienst van Waarde discovered.

Presumably when Lipton says ‘regular’ it means ‘tastes just like the competition’s’, but consumer watchdog Keuringsdienst van Waarde seemed to suspect something more devious going on. They found little clumps of something that tasted like chewing gum (the flavour expert they consulted narrowed it down to Bazooka—man, that word is a time machine!) hidden among the tea.

After half an hour of fruitless phone calls and visiting experts—the tea expert explained that tea is made of leaves, not of clumps—the solution to the mystery was presented. Lipton apparently adds sugar to its tea to mask its mediocre (perhaps we should say ‘regular’) flavour. So that is how you can drink tea, no sugar, with sugar after all.

(I wrote down the adjectives in the Lipton commercial by the way, here they are: regular, regular, regular, good, lekker, lekker, regular, lovely, rich, smooth.)

(Photo by Evan Amos who released it into the public domain)

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October 1, 2013

Scooping up toy cars to win a real one

Filed under: Automobiles,Online by Orangemaster @ 10:11 am

‘Grab a small one, win a big one’: Amsterdam advertising agency Brandbase placed 100,000 miniature cars on Rotterdam’s Binnenrotte street near the local market. One of the toy cars had a marking under it with which you win a real car. Dutch advertising agency Brandbase patiently placed all of these cars, which were scooped up in 23 minutes. Marktplaats, a Dutch auction site also sell cars. Since it has a lot of competition, this was as an attempt to position the site as the ‘quickest route’ to getting rid of your car.

It was definitely the fastest way to get rid of one real car and 100,000 small ones. My childlike brains says it’s also nice to have all those toy cars to play with even if you don’t win.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com, Photo of Matchbox toy cars by sarflondondunc, some rights reserved)

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September 29, 2013

If you see this ad, the model has died

Filed under: Health by Branko Collin @ 2:53 pm

Two years ago the Dutch ALS Foundation (ALS is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease in North America) started a bold advertising campaign to call attention to the disease.

The campaign consists of portraits of ALS sufferers on posters and in videos. New ads are released only after the model has died. The caption printed on the posters, “ik ben inmiddels overleden”, means “by now I have died”.

In 2010 the foundation made portraits of 9 patients which it expects to distribute in the next few years. It generally takes 3 to 5 years from the onset of the first ALS symptoms to the death of a patient. In 2011 the campaign kicked off after two patients had died, a woman called Conny Deenik and former hockey player and Olympian Theodoor Doyer (photo).

There is no cure for ALS. The disease causes nerves to die, after which the respiratory system breaks down.

(Photo and story: Adformatie / Stichting ALS Nederland)

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May 29, 2008

Christians get knickers in a twist over cereal advert

Filed under: Religion by Branko Collin @ 12:56 pm

In Veenendaal, part of the Dutch bible belt, the local chapter of the SGP is “shocked,” “insulted,” and “hurt” over an ad for cereal which depicts a famous scene from the Old Testament, reports RTV Utrecht (Dutch). The Kellogg’s advert that so outraged the conservative Protestant party displays a prudishly covered Eve amidst a sea of apples, watched by a snake, and under a banner which reads “Meer fruit dan vroeger” (more fruit than before).

The SGP, known mostly for its extreme misogynist stance for which it undoubtedly borrowed heavily from the Old Testament’s Garden of Eden myth, has asked the city’s executive to condemn the campaign to Kellogg’s, which must be rubbing its corporate paws in glee for such a predictive gift of free advertising.

The manufacturer’s campaign features a second ad which also depicts a scene from a fairy tale (Snow White, to be precise), but as far as I know no one has protested that one.

Via Geen Commentaar (Dutch).

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