It has been said that there is no such thing as bad press. The wisdom, for want of a better word, behind that saying is suggesting that for big companies even bad press is good press because the companies name is getting coverage, keeping itself in the public arena. If your company is making headlines, then ultimately that’s probably a good thing because it is effectively a lot of free advertising.

Companies, such a fashion brand Benetton, have in the past devised deliberately shocking ads to create headlines. Ads which they knew would in all likelihood create a stir and whip up a storm in the press. However recently it would seem that companies have now taken to using the power of the internet to create ads that do much the same, only this time the potential audience is far far greater. Indeed now companies have taken to creating commercials that they then deny are anything to do with them, or they claim were never supposed to get into the public domain. They stand back and hold their hands up knowing that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

The two most recent examples of this increasingly popular commercial tactic were both down to car companies. Ford and VW both produced TV style commercial that sprint past the line of wide-scale acceptability in a way that the likes of Benetton could only dream of back when it was running ads in newspapers featuring blood stained military fatigues and birds covered in oil spilled from tankers.

Ford created a ad that features a cat, albeit a computer generated cat, having its head severed in a sunroof by an ‘evil’ Ford SportsKa. The ad spread like wildfire across the net and created the kind of stir PR companies dream of. Ford denied the ad was anything to do with them, and later blamed their ad agency for a ‘mistake’ that allowed the ad, that was ‘not meant for public consumption,’ to escape onto the net.

British TV station, Channel 4, created the infamous swearing ad that was indeed aired just the one time before public outrage put the Channel 4 brand on the front pages of nearly all of the UK’s newspapers. The ad was shown after 10pm one night and featured a slew of celebrities from Britain and around the world swearing their heads off.

The most recent one that has recently been doing ‘the rounds’ online was, if you believe the hype, ‘unofficially produced’ for VW but again was never meant to find it’s way to the world wide web its creators claimed. However a quick search of Google’s own cached link features shows that the company in question clearly posted it on their website for a number of days before removing it after it was very much ‘out there.’ The ad shows a man of middle eastern appearance stepping into a VW Polo and driving to a restaurant where he takes up a position outside and detonates a car bomb that is strapped around his body. Shocking stuff indeed, but the bomb only explodes in the car, and the people sitting outside the restaurant are blissfully unaware of their lucky escape. The tag line then reads “Polo. Small but tough”.

Of course VW did the usual and expected thing. They issued a statement saying the ad was unauthorised and they would sue whomever it was who produced it. However a few weeks later the lawsuit disappears like smoke in the air as ‘an agreement’ is reached between the German car giant and the duo who, we are to believe, for some reason spent thousands of dollars of their own money creating this shocking commercial.

So I wonder, what’s next? Advertisers can only go so far on TV and for less money it would seem that a shocking ad can go a lot further in the anarchy of the internet. What company will be next to test the theory that no press is bad press?

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Channel 4 swearing
Ford ‘Evil twin’ SportsKa ad

Do men have stronger stomachs then women? It’s a question that came up in a recent conversation with friends. We noted among us that women seem to strictly adhere to the instructions on ‘best before’ dates, discarding anything that has gone even one day past that directed on the packet. While men, it would seem, are more open minded about when exactly it is that something becomes inedible or undrinkable.

My cleaner emptied a wide selection of packets and jars from my cupboard while I was overseas. Products such as tomato sauce, ready brek breakfast cereal, Marmite, and Vegamite were all discarded based not on whether or not they were unsuitable for consumption, but purely upon the items ‘best before’ date.

Her dogmatic approach to cupboard cleaning emptied something like a third of the contents of my cupboards. Needless to say I was fairly unimpressed, but she was insistent that the discarded items would have been bad for me. I explained that on several occasions I have consumed stuff that was a little (and sometimes a lot) past their ‘best before’ date, and I am still here to tell the story. I also pointed out to her that a bottle of water that has lived in my fridge forever is WELL past its ‘best before’ date, but it’s never been opened and when I do open it I doubt I’ll be knocked back by it’s ‘off’ smell.

Only last week she threw out a container of milk (4 pints) that was nearly full. Then she called upstairs “Sie, you need more milk love.” I sat back in my chair and recalled only having recently buying milk, so I responded “There should be some in the fridge.” She shouted back “That was off love, so I’ve poured it away.”

I went downstairs and politely explained to her that I had just had a bowl of cereal and was at that very moment enjoying a cup of tea made with the very milk she had just seen fit to pour down the drain. Her response with a laugh was “You’d be alight with the nig nogs wouldn’t you!” Referring, in her own unique and ignorantly racist style, to my recent trip to India where it’s true to say food sanitation is not as high on the health radar as it is in more developed countries. With that comment she returned to cleaning my kitchen.

So is it true, do men have stronger stomachs than women? What man hasn’t at one point or another accidentally dropped something edible on the floor only to pick it up and continue eating it after blowing on it then giving it a quick visual inspection? You would never see a woman do this, or would you? When making a coffee or cup of tea and finding that your milk isn’t quite as fresh as it perhaps should be, is it only a man who would think that more sugar in the drink will solve the problem? Do women do this kind of thing behind closed doors? Or is this something that I am assuming other men do, but in actual fact I am alone in my relaxed interpretation of ‘best before’ and the such? If so then I would like to point out to everyone that I am still here, free of decease and fighting fit, which may be down to luck, but I would argue was more down to judgement.

Now, anyone care for a coffee? The milk isn’t so good but it’ll be fine with an extra spoon of sugar, you’ll see.

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FSA Explain ‘Best before’
‘Use by’ and ‘Best before’ explained

In the light of the comments made on my last post, I decided that today I would celebrate Old Glory and my love of America with this monster montage of pictures I have taken of the American flag.

In my last post some people suggested that I perhaps to don’t like America, that I’m “anti-America.’ In reality nothing could be further from the truth – and I am serious. I genuinely LOVE America!

America saved my life back when I lived out there for a short while in 1992. It gave me a chance to start a-fresh, to get some perspective on things and to broaden my horizons in a way that only living in a foreign land can do.

Since that time I have travelled to America regularly, spending weeks on end there every year. Kicking back relaxing, meeting new people, having new experiences and most importantly for America… spending my money!

One should not confuse my dislike of Americas current political situation as a dislike of the country itself. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I’m an Englishman that it would seem many of my humorous quips at America are lost on Americans and seen instead as ‘America bashing’ rather than harmless banter that it is.

America is so much a part of who I am a friend once commented that if you were to cut me I would bleed stars and stripes! My love of the country, and my exceptionally close relationship to it, saw me play the role of ‘surrogate’ American to many people in the aftermath of 9/11. As you can imagine, such was the international shock and following sympathy for America, that many people wanted to reach out to Americans and offer their sympathies. For those who didn’t actually know an American I became the next best option, despite the fact that at the time I knew no-one effected by those events.

Briton is not a ‘flag flying’ kind of country, but I hung a huge American flag on my house and placed an American flag sticker on the rear window of my car. Many of the papers here printed pull page American flags for people to place in their windows or wherever, providing them with a way of showing their support and sympathy to a nation so terribly wounded.

Shortly after 9/11 I travelled to New York City to re-acquaint myself with the skyline and to pay my respects. I can’t explain to you why I needed to do that, but I just did. As a young man in love with the buildings of the world that touched the sky, standing atop of those iconic twin towers in Manhattan became a life goal for me. I dreamed of one day standing there looking down at the world, 110 stories below me. Seven years after first stepping foot on American soil I finally achieved that ambition as I walked out onto the roof of the North Tower.

I have travelled from coast to coast across America by road, woven a vast web of vapor-trails spanning thousands of miles in American skies, and walked among the skyscrapers that so inspiringly reach for the stars in search of the American dream. If home is where the heart is, then anytime I am in America, I am home.

I have met a great deal of wonderful and interesting people in the United States, and along the way I have made some friendships that I feel sure will last for many years to come. So excuse me for not loving your President or the way your leaders act upon the international stage, but know that for the little it’s worth America has a true friend in me.

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Sites by me looking at America
Point and Click America
American Reality Radio (series 1)
American Reality Radio (series 2)
[Video] Moments
[Video] An American Christmas