WTF is Wrong with that Ad?

Funny Ad Placement on Oddee today. I was ready an article called 15 Ads that'll make you say WTF? and it took me a good minute to realize that the second ad for Medifast was not part of the article, but an actual ad that had been placed there. I was wondering what was so WTF about it. Even though I know they didn't specifically place their ad in this article, I'm going to call this a Win, since I did look at that banner ad for a good minute and now know that, apparently, 15,000 recommend it.

Money with surplus value

What financial crisis?
If money is the problem, let money be the solution:


Persil is a detergent.
Hornbach is a home improvement store.
The copy says: You can beautify everything.

Wow, wouldn't this be the perfect ad space?
Guaranteed relevancy paired with automatic circulation.

Twelve students of the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart and their teacher, Thomas Winkler, suggest that the German Federal Reserve should offer parts of the euro bills for advertising. They calculate that the government could earn as much as 700 billion euro within two years. To reach that sum with the circulating twelve million bills, the price for one ad would have to be 1.20 Euro for one month.

For now, the bills with their clever headlines, generated a whole lot of media buzz for the advertising students and their artist/teacher.

However, the idea is not entirely new: During another Great Depression in the late 1920s a lot of German communities printed their own money, because inflation was so rapid that the government couldn't print bills fast enough. Some of them printed ads on their bills to co-finance the paper they were printed on.

Think twice

Click on this ad. Twice!

There is more here. And here. And on every other Jung von Matt ad on adsoftheworld.com

Thoughts?

A great way to promote a great agencies? A clever way to stick out in all-ad-environment and make your target audience smile? A good way to attract creatives to one of the most-creative German agencies? Smart media use combined with a witty idea?

Or a great way to offend your potential employees cause you imply cheating when they might just search for inspiration? An embarassing, in-your-face self-adulation to an audience who either already knows how great of an agency you are or who doesn't care? A way to turn admiration into rejection?

Or is it a great idea, but simply placed on the wrong (i.e. boring, not-worth-to-copy-at-all) ads?

The newest ad placement: Math tests

A California high school is like most public schools, trapped by budget cuts. One math teacher, Tom Farber, took action into his own hands. His printing budget was cut in half, so he reached out to local companies to advertise on math tests and thus foot the bill. Little one-liners grace the first page of each exam and come at a cost of $10 for an ad on a quiz, $20 to be on a chapter test, and $30 for a spot on the semester exam. Parents are even playing a part and sponsoring inspirational quotes posted around the classroom.

Is this exploiting public schools? Or do desperate times call for desperate measures?

All I know is that this makes me think of my dear mother and her middle school library. She spends money out of her own pocket on buying extra Twilight books because she hates turning down someone who finally gets excited about picking up a book. So maybe I'll whip up some ad sponsored bookmarks or an advertised Dewey Decimal System poster.

It's sad that schools are forced to do this, but I'm glad people are inspiring solutions.