So you’re in Egypt for some reason, checking out the Sphinx or something, and someone offers you a delightful snack of Panda Cheese.

Being the idiot that you are, you say no.

Bad move, fool!

Panda Cheese Panda will make you regret the day you had the gall to decline his delicious cheese.

Best Egyptian advertising campaign ever? Pretty much.

Credits via I Believe in Advertising:

Their latest bad-vertising effort is so horrible, ROTI couldn’t help but post about it; everywhere we turn, someone is ripping Microsoft’s latest effort.

A friend recently posted this video to Facebook with the following comment:

This is a real video that Microsoft made (now…in the year 2009) to show people how to have Windows 7 parties in their homes.

Presumably, they paid actual money to do this, and I assume had a lot of meetings and discussion about what would make the best video.

Enjoy the fruits of their labor:

Washington Post tech writer Rob Pegoraro tried to explain MSFT’s motivation in an objective manner, but eventually he couldn’t help but start mocking them for their utter tonedeafness.

The idea, as veteran Microsoft reporter Todd Bishop reported earlier this month, is that Windows 7 fans can show off the Windows Vista replacement’s features to friends, in return for which the folks in Redmond will give each host some help organizing the gathering and a free copy of Windows 7. Microsoft signed up an Irvington, N.Y., firm called House Party, which has organized similar marketing campaigns for the likes of Hershey and Gerber, to run the show.

And at some point, somebody at either House Party or Microsoft decided that a YouTube clip could help explain the concept to party organizers.

They apparently didn’t factor in how the video might look to those who have yet to hop on the Win 7 bandwagon.

As you can see below, our four implausibly perky, demographically balanced hosts — standing in a spotless kitchen decorated with red, blue and orange balloons — talk about how “great it is to host a launch party!” that’s really just another social gathering (“in a lot of ways, you’re just throwing a party with Windows 7 as an honored guest!”). They suggest watching some of the other 100 or so YouTube clips for ideas about showing off Windows 7, while one wisely reminds hosts to make sure that the new operating system’s set up a couple of days early: “play with Windows 7 before the party,” he emphasizes.

In addition, they recommend … oh, good grief, I can’t keep describing this with a straight face.

By two minutes into the video, I could only hold my head in my hands, cringing and saying, “No, no, no, this can’t possibly be real!” before giggling helplessly at how high these six minutes and 14 seconds of video ranked on the Unintentional Comedy Scale.

Jason Chen from Gizmodo was aghast:

Holy Steve Ballmer. This set of Launch Party videos are incredible for its nostalgia [value]. No, they’re not old videos; I just thought the whole advertising industry moved past fake setups like this back in the ’90s.

Give it a watch and see. My god. They’re talking about having a party for Windows 7.  And the cast? It looks like a guy, his mom, his sister, and his sister’s rebellious college fling that turned into a long term relationship.

But seriously. You know how you’re watching something that’s so surprising that you can’t believe what you’re seeing that you literally have nothing to add to the visuals? This is it.

It’s like if you took a man from the 1400s and showed him a plasma TV.

ROTI tipster Nafets sent along a collection of scathing critiques, including this slam from the Daily Telegraph:

Four actors of diverse age and ethnic backgrounds plough through corporate messages for six minutes and 14 seconds of toe-curlingly awful fakery in a kitchen set with some plates of food that only Male Computer User (Black Ethnic Group) eats and some balloons to emphasise the key celebration message.

A Telegraph commenter quipped, “What you don’t see, offscreen, is Steve Ballmer holding a gun to the heads of their families…”

Nafets adds, “When Gates was at MS, people looked up to [them], and a lot of cool people were drawn there…now MS seems more dull and off every day. Just a reality denying Ballmer who runs mad when he sees sleek iPhones or hears bad talk about MS.”

Mac software developer Caleb Sasser decided to cut Microsoft down at the knees with this remix of the Windows 7 House Party video…it is glorious.

As Rob Pegoraro aptly summed things up: “That’s probably not the result Microsoft was looking for. But, hey, at least it’s got people talking about Windows 7!”

This amusing Cash4Gold Super Bowl ad made a splash when it first aired.

Come on, it’s tough not to laugh when MC Hammer claims to be selling a medallion of himself wearing a medallion, or when Ed McMahon gently pats a golden toilet and says, “Goodbye old friend” in the most wistful of tones.

Unfortunately, the company that they were representing is being accused by former employees and blogs of being fiendish in the extreme.

There’s obviously something questionable about a company with the sales pitch, “send us your gold…we will melt it down and pay you later, we swear.”

But to trade on the soul of a dying Ed McMahon to loot the olds of their gold…that is reprehensible.

If true.

The LA Times published an expose on the shady gold melters not long ago…

Cash4Gold.com, the Florida metal refinery that offers fast money to those who mail in baggies full of jewelry, has hit on a formula that would make 13th-century alchemists weep: It’s found a way to turn desperation into gold.

And in this economy, that’s a growth business. Last week, the 8-year-old company ponied up enough bullion to buy 30 seconds of famously expensive Super Bowl airtime, capping an ascent from the basement of late-night “As seen on TV” marketing.

A rising tide might lift all boats, but an ebbing tide draws buzzards. The airwaves and netways are filling up with quick-money schemes, not just Cash4Gold and its competitors — Dollars4Gold, GoldKit and GoldPaq — but simple ways to make thousands a week at home, or wring a profit from the depleted housing market.

But it’s Cash4Gold, which now boasts 350 employees, that has been able to buy its way into the cultural mainstream. In a bit of clever typecasting, its ad featured Ed McMahon and MC Hammer, faded celebrities known for their financial woes…

[...]

Cash4gold said it saw traffic to its website multiply by a factor of 10 in the wake of the ad.

That the commercial focuses on gold and says little about cash is just how Cash4Gold likes it. The company’s advertising is loaded with gold bars, fistfuls of diamonds and piles of expensive-looking jewelry (even though, of course, it’s those things that the consumer is giving up. )

But beneath the shiny veneer lies a dull reality: Cash4Gold is essentially a buyer of scrap metal. And scrap doesn’t fetch much on the open market.

Now the blog Consumerist has engaged Cash4Gold in a battle royale that has escalated into lawsuits.

By publicizing the true confessions of a former employee, Consumerist drew the wrath of Jeff Aronson, the corpulent CEO.

According to former employees and Consumerist, here’s what the Cash4Gold peeps allegedly do: they get you to describe your gold to them, and then send it to them. They then insure it for $100 or less.

Their methods for appraising the gold are said to be extremely ghetto, basically checking out the gold with a magnifying glass and pouring some stuff on it to see what happens. Meth labs are far more sophisticated than this operation.

The checks they issue are far smaller than one could reasonably expect to receive at a pawn shop.

A former employee claims that they deliberately delay delivery of checks in order to prevent customers from successfully seeking refunds within the alloted 10-day window. When enraged customers call to complain, reps are given bonuses for talking them down to a proscribed settlement number. If they happen to lose the gold – oops! – they blame the post office and the customer, and present the insurance settlement of $100 or less. To hear this employee tell it, it’s just a big scam.

Cash4Gold, through their representatives, have vehemently denied all these charges, asserting that their appraisal methods are “state of the art,” that there is no such thing as a Cash4Gold “scam,” and that the claims of the outspoken employees are completely false.

These denials are generally accompanied by threats of a lawsuit, if compliance is not obtained in deleting those charges from a particular web site.

Consumerist said “meet me at the court…it’s going down” and then issued a full barrage, “The Article Cash4Gold Doesn’t Want You To Read,” taking the issue apart point by point and blasting Aaronson & Co. for purportedly shameful behavior:

Less than two weeks after we ran Liberis’ anonymous “10 Confessions,” we received our first letter from the company’s lawyers. (The company also sent letters to Yahoo!, the LA Times and reportedly a number of blogs – including some that had linked to or referenced Liberis’ post.) The letter to us asserted that the post by Liberis was “false and defamatory” and that we should “immediately remove” our coverage of it, and “block further posting.”

We decided not to remove the post, and instead replied with a 2,400-word request for additional details that might back up Cash4Gold’s claims. Reason: we felt that killing a post we deemed to be both credible and newsworthy would be a disservice to our readers and a betrayal of our responsibility as consumer journalists.

In that letter, and in several follow ups, we’ve asked Cash4Gold and its lawyers for evidence to support their broad assertions of falsehood. We’ve also lauded the company for starting its own blog, and pushed it to continue to join “the public debate” about these issues.

Instead, Cash4Gold has pursued a take-no-prisoners approach against Liberis and her former colleague Nephew. The company sued both women, who, until recently, had no legal representation. Both now await the outcome of court cases that could lead to escalating fines and perhaps even jail time based on contempt charges. For our part, we’ve continued to research the story. Since Cash4Gold’s original challenge, we’ve talked to Liberis and Nephew, Cash4Gold customers, the Better Business Bureau, the Pompano Beach fire department and the U.S. Postal Service, among others. We’ve dug through numerous web sites, legal documents, complaints to the Florida Attorney General and public records. We’ve also tried to interview Cash4Gold’s Aronson, though without success. Bottom line: the available evidence from the time Liberis was working at Cash4Gold provides ample and compelling support for her 10 points.

The kicker is that Consumerist, once a Gawker Media blog under the aegis of minister of darkness Nick Denton, was recently purchased by none other than Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.

This means that Consumerist has access to Consumer Reports’ awesome system for testing products and services – and that their credibility is backed by the superb Consumer Reports brand.

In this case, they rolled out the freakin’ Mystery Shoppers.

To understand the basic deal that Cash4Gold offers, we turned to Consumer Reports’ “mystery shoppers” – the nationwide team of anonymous consumers who help buy the gear that our parent company tests. The mystery shoppers sent 24 identical gold pendants and chains to Cash4Gold and some of its national competitors. The necklaces were purchased for $175 each. We calculated their “melt value” – meaning how much the raw gold was worth – as about $70 each, based on the market price for gold when the necklaces were received by the companies (during the test period, the price of gold fluctuated, but never dropped below $900 an ounce).

Our tests – which lasted from May through early July – found that Cash4Gold and its competitors offered simple and relatively transparent service. Online tracking systems were updated promptly, the companies generally mailed out checks within a day or two, and customer service reps were courteous and professional. The actual offers, however, were miserly. Cash4Gold sent back checks ranging from $7.60 to $12.72 (or 11% to 18% of melt value), the lowest amounts of any firm. But others weren’t far behind: GoldKit offered $7.81 to $20.59, and GoldPaq $8.22 to $13.11. Each of those deals was worse than what our mystery shoppers could get at local jewelers and pawn shops, which offered anywhere from $25 to $50. The results reinforce advice we’ve offered before, which is that consumers should not use these highly marketed services because the payments they offer are too low. No matter how nice the person is who gives it to you, a bad deal is still a bad deal.

Cash4Gold declined to discuss the test results, but other news reports suggest lowball checks are typical. CEO Aronson has said the company pays from as little as 20% to as much as 80% of the gold’s value. And in an interview with Good Morning America, he suggested that customers who want more money should take their business elsewhere. “If all you care about is the net dollar, and you’re willing to go to the seedy part of town, and you’re willing to travel around … I want you to go there,” Aronson said.

All this stands in contrast to Cash4Gold’s advertising claims. While its website acknowledges that a jeweler or a pawn shop might offer more, one TV ad boasts “With gold, silver and platinum at their highest value in decades, Cash4Gold.com is able to give you top dollar for your unwanted jewelry.” The same ad goes on: “Because we own our refinery, we can cut out the middleman, which means more cash in your pocket.” But we have trouble squaring that “top dollar” claim with the offers we got…

Again, Cash4Gold staunchly denies the claims of their disgruntled former employees. They have a blog post up dissecting the charges point by point. They concede that, yeah, the deals they are offering are not what you could expect at a pawn shop. But what homebound elderly wants to venture out across the tracks to haggle with creepy Jerome at King Pawn?

However, Cash4Gold’s scorched earth strategy of threatening lawsuits against anyone who besmirches their reputation seems to be backfiring. Consumerist has doubled down and they aren’t afraid of the legal posturing.

The story is now rippling out into the greater media realm…here’s a Reuters wrapup that sees Consumers Union extending a hearty middle finger to Aaronson and his posse.

A new investigative report from Consumerist.com shines a spotlight on the business practices of Cash4Gold, which bills itself as the “World’s #1 Gold Buyer,” and on the company’s efforts to silence Internet criticism through litigation and financial incentives.

The report adds that the gold-buying company recently sued Consumerist.com by appending the consumer-focused website to existing lawsuits against two former employees…

[...]

“We follow-up on such challenges conscientiously,” says Marc Perton, Executive Editor for Online Media at Consumers Union, “and so we immediately set out to learn whether the company’s allegations had merit, both through our own research and through requests to Cash4Gold for more information.” The company has declined to cooperate, though, and just this week canceled a scheduled interview with Cash4Gold CEO Jeff Aronson.

The investigation provided support to Consumerist.com’s decision to publish the “10 Confessions” post in the first place, and also turned up evidence that supports Liberis’ account of certain business practices and working conditions at the firm. But the Consumerist.com also found that Cash4Gold may have made improvements in the time since Liberis worked there last year. For example, Liberis said the firm was shut down temporarily for “health and code violations,” a statement the company disputed. Fire department records show that the Cash4Gold location was indeed shut down after a number of violations last year, but that Cash4Gold has accumulated no new violations since moving to a different address earlier this year.

“We’re proud of the work that Ben and Meg have done, and we only regret that their report could not include a response from Cash4Gold CEO Jeff Aronson beyond his earlier public comments,” Perton said. “We also hope today’s post will help lay to rest the idea that blogs don’t do investigative reporting.”

Take a look for yourself. Knowing what you know now, do the claims of this advertisement ring true to you?

I would never do business with Cash4Gold…

But I would GLADLY attend the monthly Jamaica Plain dance party of the same name.

You’re probably aware that Radio Shack is changing its name to “The Shack.”

The new brand is scheduled to be unveiled Aug. 6 during a three-day launch event in New York and San Francisco, the company said Monday. RadioShack also plans to get the word out through television, print and Web advertising.

“The Shack” was chosen as the new name based on the fact that many consumers were already dropping “Radio” from the company’s name when referring to one of its stores. “We decided to embrace that fact and share it with the world,” Lee Applebaum, chief marketing office for RadioShack, said in a statement.

RadioShack also hopes the new name will help the company change its image.

“We have tremendous equity in consumers’ minds around cables, parts and batteries, but it’s critically important that we help them to understand the role that we play in keeping people connected in this highly mobile world,” Applbaum said. “You will see a real focus on mobility and wireless products from leading brands in our new advertising.”

RadioShack announced last month the addition of T-Mobile to its line up of wireless carriers that the company has partnered with in its 4,000 stores as the retailer moves toward a more wireless-focused product line. RadioShack also sells AT&T and Sprint as wireless options for its products.

The Shack (I guess we have to call it that now) realized that it couldn’t stay alive by competing with the Internet for sales of parts and accessories. In a bid to hang onto relevance, the bricks-and-mortar chain is going hard after the youth market and is attempting to position itself as a mobile-phone superstore.

To that end, the company has released a dozen strange 15 second TV spots.

This particular one caught the eye of our tipster SecretM, who has a keen interest in Swedish culture and thus noticed that there was something a little off:

“There’s a weird Radio Shack commercial with a strange Swedish song on it,” he wrote us, “and with imagery that seems to conflate Sweden and Switzerland.“

It appears as though the animators of this commercial are a little confused about the difference between European cultures…

The Alpine setting is all wrong, and the dudes look Bavarian. SecretM admits that the ladies look Scando, but that’s no surprise considering the worldwide reputation of Viking maidens for a combination of beauty and promiscuity.

There’s a mountain goat running around, I guess for a little flavor of Switzerland, for the hell of it? Those countries are all the same, right The Shack?

There’s also a representative of the Sami people in there, which is legit Scandinavia…

The weird thing about this ad is that it nails the archetypal northern Europeans it goes for, it just recklessly extends its reach way beyond the Scandinavia it’s supposedly talking about.

But look, I get it. The entire idea here is to rebrand with irreverent irony, in the manner of Burger King. Factual precision is thrown by the wayside because the only important thing is attracting the flickering attention span of young males with money to spend on electronics.

That’s all well and good, but there is the song they’ve chosen to accompany their ad. This is a Swedish pop confection so insipid, it would repulse the very audience they’re trying to attract, if they could only comprehend it…

So apparently this song is about the summer practice of rocking out in a Husvagn, a sort of trailer that’s the poor Swede’s summer home. Husvagn freaks like to go to the same places every year and party together in little summer communities.

However, to see this song’s depiction of Husvagn culture, it’s little more than a bunch of tubby bitches leering at hoes, engaging in hooliganism, and rapping like the crackers they are.

According to the translation provided to us by SecretM and his associate Nafets, this song is about one thing only: monumental doucheosity.

The first guy, who at times resembles an emo Perez Hilton, sings a verse about how they were all camping out and chilling and the mosquitoes were like everywhere, bro. The best part is when he sings a line about how he “was -almost- cold,” and then does a little dance move like “I’m gonna hug myself cause I’m cold, but actually not, because I’m too cool to be cold for real.”

The girl comes in to sing a verse, but she is quickly interrupted by her loser compatriots, who exclaim that they love to “spy after breasts!”

Then sunglasses-wearing tool and an albino Jared Leto come in and rap MORE about the practice of “spying after breasts” with binoculars in hand. (One then makes a reference to applying “SPF 100″ in order to chill outside on a summer’s day, and as a fellow descendant of Northern European peoples, I can appreciate that sentiment.)

The translation of the song’s refrain is pretty much the opposite of poetry, and trust me, it’s 100% the fault of the source material:

A caravan during the summer
means a party every day
The sun shines through the trees
Almost every day

A caravan, during the summer
One simply has to have
And a camping place in Sweden
one sets up and has a good time

So this is what The Shack’s pitch to consumers boils down to.

A goof-ass commercial that actually makes you dumber while you watch it.

Some comments left at ADWEEK were vicious, slamming The Shack for its tonedeafness:

This [is] the hackiest campaign ever! I can’t believe this work can be so consistently BAD. There’s not a shred of redemption. Bad art direction, awful copy, terrible music — just hokey and cheesy. Everything this brand is has been harnessed into what might be the worst relaunch campaign for any company in YEARS.

They can call it whatever they want – the sad fact is that once you get inside the store, it’s still going to be full of the same irrelevant junk they’ve had for the past 25 years. So maybe they’ll succeed in getting everyone to refer to it as The Shack…as in “The Shack – that place I never shop at”.

what? This is advertising? No wonder people dislike advertising. it is because of garbage like this. Not funny, interesting, smart, conceptual, insightful. Just bad. Really bad.

Just to get the message completely across that The Shack’s hopes of survival are pinned on their new image, Electronics a la Douche, this happened:

Today begins the big re-launch of RadioShack. The stale old corporate name will become The Shack.

To promote the new moniker, RadioShack is holding events in San Francisco and New York today through Aug. 8.

And then there’s the Web site radioshack.com/theshack. You’d think the site would impart interesting information about the new concept for the old corner store.

Instead, however, the site is streaming live audio and video from The Shack events on both coasts.

No, it’s not a discussion about electronics or RadioShack or anything interesting. It’s a radio show (of all things) hosted by some obnoxious, vulgar personalities…

I listened for about 10 minutes, of which 90 percent of the discussion had to do with female body parts. The rest was mostly about the sexual escapades of the female shock jock. Oh, and there was a riff on enemas, including an interview with a passerby about coffee enemas.

“Give that man a RadioShack gift card,” one of the hosts said.

I listened to some clips of the radio show in question…

The haggard female host goes into this long rambling anecdote about hooking up with Eddie Van Halen, but insists that she did not “do” him.

Gross.

What we have learned is that The Shack is delighted with its new image, which has all the appeal of a stale fart trapped in a revolving door.

It was originally set up for people who operate popular channels on the site, but every so often Google has reached out to people like the dad who recorded “David After Dentist” to share the wealth.

Now, they’re making it an official policy. From now on, the creators of  extremely popular YouTube videos will be invited to set up AdSense accounts and profit off of the advertising from the millions of views they’re racking up.

According to the Google Blog, “These individual video partnerships recognize the role popular “one-off” videos play on YouTube, and have helped many people earn thousands of dollars a month as their videos went viral and endured over time.”

We decided it was time to spread the wealth. Today we’re excited to announce that we’re extending the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos on our site. Now, when you upload a video to YouTube that accumulates lots of views, we may invite you to monetize that video and start earning revenue from it. To determine whether a particular video is eligible for monetization, we look at factors like the number of views, the video’s virality and compliance with the YouTube Terms of Service. If your video is eligible for monetization, you will receive an email and see an “Enable Revenue Sharing” message next to your video on the watch page, as well as in other places in your account.

This is a cool move by Google.

No idea how much money you could actually make off a viral video, but hopefully it was enough to buy David an ice cream or something for his brilliant performance.

This is dumb, fake and lame on so many levels.

[via GIZMODO, but could just as easily have come from FAILBLOG]

Sure, the advertising world of bygone decades makes a fantastic setting for a TV show (though we’ll admit, we’re not regular viewers…guess we’re still a little bitter that the show usurped the Wire’s final chance at awards show glory).

However, it was also the heyday of ads that are disturbing, off-putting, or simply bizarre to modern sensibilities.

Flickr user SA Steve has compiled a truly mammoth collection of vintage advertising images.

The selections below only scratch the surface of his epic compilation…

Let’s start with a lovely holiday treat that is sure to appall your guests with its combo of fat-laden cheesiness and stomach-turning visual grossness.

You think prescription drug ads are strange now?

Try the old days, when anti-psychotics were sold via print ads featuring terrifying eyeballs…

Sanka. The only coffee brand that won’t result in child abuse.

What was with coffee back in the day? Dudes were beating up their entire family over it!

On a lighter note, in this time of economic apocalypse, this next ad presents an idea that urban roomies might want to consider.

Look, the fella on the right is leading a singalong! We’re guessing it’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me.”

This next one is so dated and offensive, it’s almost come full circle to being witty and postmodern.

SORRY in advance for this next image, but there were a bunch of these and ultimately, our will to resist posting one was whittled down to a toothpick.

A toothpick that was snapped in half by the VERY weird dude lurking in the background of this ad!

Here’s a REALLY charming image, summoning a move that has worked for us countless times. The ladies go BOY-CRAZY when you blow smoke in their grill!

Try it this weekend, fellas.

This next one ought to make a comeback as part of the GWOT. Donate your Truth Dollars to fight Bin Laden in a propaganda war!

Let’s wind up this trip through the offensive, unintentionally funny and simply strange world of old-school advertising with an image that really, really, really does not make us want to buy the product being advertised.

SA Steve has over 1000 images in his collection.

You may want to set aside your afternoon to peruse them all.

The feature, called “Hot Spots,” tells users exactly how viewers responded to each second of their videos, and includes stats on rewinding and fast-forwarding. Apparently it also works with demographic data, so you can, for example, observe that female viewers like to rewind the Mike Schmidt scene in Quantum Boggs: Episode I and watch it over and over again.

The GOOGLE BLOG explains more:

We determine “hot” and “cold” spots by comparing your video’s abandonment rate at that moment to other videos on YouTube of the same length, and incorporating data about rewinds and fast-forwards. So what does that mean? Well, when the graph goes up, your video is hot: few viewers are leaving, and many are even rewinding on the control bar to see that sequence again. When the graph goes down, your content’s gone cold: many viewers are moving to another part of the video or leaving the video entirely.

Here’s an example of Hot Spots in action:

You can see that many viewers are not impressed with the dance moves of Michael Rucker, Associate Product Marketing Manager at YouTube; they’re leaving the video at a faster than average rate almost immediately after the video begins. But the longer the video goes on, the more people tend to stay, generating a hot spot at the end of the video. Better late than never — kudos, Rucker!

We think you’ll find Hot Spots useful in several ways. For example, users can figure out which scenes in their videos are the “hottest” and edit those videos, or include well-timed annotations, to keep their audience more engaged. Partners might similarly create better content — like more exciting promotional trailers — for use on and off YouTube, and advertisers and agencies can study the effectiveness of their creative, to make sure they keep viewers’ attention throughout an ad. Now that Insight shows what parts of videos viewers are watching and skipping, creators no longer have to play guessing games.

This is a pretty amazing development, although we have little doubt it will be used by the forces of evil to optimize their mind-control apparatus – also known as local television news programs.

[via READ WRITE WEB]