My wife works in advertising so we find ourselves talking about ads pretty frequently. More specifically the company she works for does advertising for health care and life style companies. Claire can joke about the commercials that her company and companies like hers make. You know – the ones where if you don’t listen closely, you may end up with a missing arm, heart disease, birth defects and death. A woman is walking through a forest of flowers, can’t see a damn thing, but then they peel away the cloudy sticker on the camera and PRESTO, she can see! “Thank you Claritin”. Her company did not do that commercial, but I’m still pretty sure they do produce commercials that can cause mild cases of diarrhea.

Claire came across this ad titled “Stop Babies and Puppies” and sent it my way. According to them (the AICP) “there is a menacing force overtaking the ad industry – advertising cliches”, these clichés especially include babies and puppies. The AICP (Association of Independent Commercial Producers) is now taking submissions to their award show.

Mistake – they have a clever video on their web page but it’s not posted on YouTube or any other service – it appears to be hosted on their site. I assume the reasoning for this is that if I like the video, I’ll send you the link. I, being any random person who watches said video, and you being my friend. Well for the most part they’re wrong. I’m putting it on this blog because I write about such things, but I’m not sharing it on Twitter and I’m not sharing it through Facebook. The mistake; can’t embed the video in all my favorite places – it could have reached all of my friends, followers, and fans (The 3 Fs™ [I just made that up] ©/™). What I’m saying is: Always make sure your funny content can be posted to your 3Fs™.

On the plus side, they have some creative content that makes me giggle. The first being that fancy flow cart that will answer the question “Is my ad a cliché”? Click here if you’d like to see it close up. They also have a “cliché” ad machine where you can create your own cliché ads using their videos of babies and puppies, put text over it, and edit them in the site. Lastly, they have posters, wallpapers, and stencils you can download to help support the cause of NO advertising with clichés – all of which I’m sure millions of Americans will download and use regularly (that was sarcastic – you’d see it on my face if you were sitting here with me.)

If you’d like to see the whole ad campaign, you can check it out at http://stopbabiesandpuppies.com