10 Ads The US Won't See

prostoalex writes "Some ads made by world's leading advertising agencies for well-known brands will never be seen in the United States. The Gucci G-Spot turned out to be too risque, video for Drug-Free America was deemed too disgusting, Internet's favorite Honda "Cog" commercial won't air due to the high prices for a 2-minute spot, and Japanese commercials with American actors have contracts preventing the companies to run the same ads in the US. AdAge provides a link to the pictures and video (Windows Media .ASF format, alas) of the 10 best unaired commercials." I can get the ASFs working under VLC.

Comments

Re:Ads will HAVE to become better very soon

[fermion]

I think the ad people are already doing the best they can. It is like all content. The vast majority of it is crap. Some of it is very good. A tiny slice is excellent and becomes part of the culture. They might be able to do better if they let the creative end own the process, but then perhaps you don't end up with the hybrid needed to push products.

As far as whether a commercial is offensive, the criteria is really whether your target market is going to react negatively, and then whether any religious of political fanatics will react negatively. For example, beer commercials can show nearly naked women all they want because it is not offensive to the target market and others that are offended really can only complain. On the other hand, a beer commercial is not going to show much male skin because it will offend the homophobic males that make up a significant portion, though not necessarily the majority, of the demographic.

The future probably holds an increase in embedded ads, or a return to days when a single company sponsors a show. Either one will get a company exposure while maintaining a reasonable ad budget.