Those clever little algorithms designed to pick up on words in articles and match a decent ad with it often backfire. The worst example is probably when Mercedes banner ads kept appearing around articles about princess Dianas death. It's been over a decade since and despite unlimited tweaking, these things still happen. In this article in a Norwegian newspaper the headline reads: "Steira is too thin to ski", as this athlete weighs less than the weight required to compete in Ryblinsk.

Underneath there's a banner announcing how to lose weight fast. Oops. Watch the bad banner in action here.

The typical adventurous Mini drivers are at it again, this time they have somehow gotten themselves into a bit of a jam, leaning off the edge of a drawbridge in Istanbul about to tip over to the wrong side and into the watery grave below. No worries, toss anything useless out, including the jam-packed wallet, and perhaps the weight distribution will shift enough to lean the car back? Nope. Then, perhaps lowering the tail lift will "improve the downforce" enough to save them? Geeks, put your calculators away and just run with this idea for a minute, will it? Nope. The Mini Roadster has front wheel drive, they're doomed anyway. Ka-pow! Concept fail!

No strangers to courting controversy, as you may recall Hell Pizza did the famous George W Bush posters that stated "Even Hell has standards", these billboards attracted worldwide attention as even Spiegel Online published the news (kindly asking to use our images for their article).

Then when Osama Bin Laden was killed, Hell Pizza ran a timely ad in the Herald with the line "Come in, Osama, we’ve been expecting you".

Now they're giving away free syringes as a prize. Except of course they're not syringes, they're pens and wouldn't hurt anyone unless that whole mightier than the sword thing is to be taken literally. The syringe-pens carry the line: "Hell, creating addicts since 1996". Stuff.co.nz reports that parents were shocked by the realistic blood-filled syringe-pen prize.

Looks like H&M got caught with their hand in the cookie-jar, selling items that seem a tad too inspired by another graphic artists work. Doing an Urban Outfitters if you will, when their necklace-copy-cat was found it became a trending topic, even if one wasn't sure of who did it first...

Poor Rick Santorum, first he's hounded so long on the internet by Dan Savage that his name has become synonymous with a dirty sex acts side-effects when you google it.. And now he's launched Conservatives Unite Moneybomb.. ie: CUM

Clearly, nobody who works for him ever thought of what the acronym spelled. Or did they and are just after the side-effect of extra eyeballs looking at the page garnered when the entire internet passes a link around and laughs? They might actually have learned something from Dan Savages campaign. Please tell me this is the case, I refuse to believe people are this stupid.

The North Dakota Tourism agency has hired an agency based somewhere in 1977 to produce this ad, where two men in a bar sporting high fashion items such a teal shirt with the collar popped out on the blazer and those fancy zip-up boots ogle giggling women parading outside on the street. The headlines - there's two of them - reads

Dinner. Drinks. Decisions. Arrive a guest, leave a legend.

Since I don't even know where to begin pointing out the many wrongs here, I'll just point out the really funny. The lass on the left is clearly thinking "PENIS" in neon lights. Apparently, there are no men in North Dakota. Unless of course the women are the visitors and they hail from a place where one shops for men in windows. Sortof like the opposite of the red-light district in Amsterdam. A place where men are placed beind glass, frozen in fashion time, and fed beers until a lady pops by to use him for the evening. I'd like to see the tourism ad for that place actually.

The height of irony recently has got to be the news that Obama solicits designers to work - unpaid - on ... jobs poster!. $60 million cash on hand in campaign funding and not a penny goes toward this poster. Obama, after all, is the guy who raised more campaign money than any candidate in history, but apparently he doesn't like to use it.

The international society of men's health campaign called Let's talk balls has run into trouble in Sweden with leading doctors writing an debate/opinion piece in the leading national newspaper arguing that the campaign both threatens men's health and is illegal.

Their article opens with:

The pharmaceutical company Bayer AB launches under the guise of "International Society of Men's Health" an advertising campaign with a view to bringing Swedish men use testosterone products company.

(I know, advertising that sells something, who would have thunk it, right?)

Apple computers have taken issue with a small cafe in Bonn called "apple child" ( Apfelkind ). The U.S. company is bothered by the logo of the café, which shows a red apple with a white silhouette of a child's head. Apple complains that there exists a likelihood of confusion with their own logo. The owner of the café feels that "Apple must be joking".

All thee who speak German can get more from this clip.

Apple gegen Apfelkind by verbraucherinfoTV

Cult shaker, the brand that likes to use nudes in ads to grab eyeballs, and then doubled them for extra attention has now found a new way to get into the headlines. Still on their 'tone of voice' though, they've held a competition where the prize was: free boob job!

What is possibly the worlds worst magazine giveaway has been spotted by Adfreak. Oggi, the italian celebrity magazine, is giving away a free set of steak knives with the issue that carries Amanda Knox on the cover. If you've been in a news-coma the last few years, ms Knox was imprisoned for slaughtering her roommate with a butcher knife. A conviction that has now been overturned. Stay classy Italy.

Or as Adfreak puts it: Oh, there's a pizza cutter in there, too. That makes it OK.

The ad above, which loks like it was conceived in 1992 by a team who still think that ponytails on men are hot, a male bicyclist hides his face so that the pretty lady in the car next to him won't see him. Forget that bikes are a great way to stay fit (and a great excuse to show off your - ahem - assets, guys), cheap and easy. In GM-adland you will only get laid if you have a car. Still.

Same Same men billigt reads the most trying pun I've ever seen in this Byggmax headline. Yes, they're playing with the English expression same same but different, instead adding "but cheap" in Swedish at the end. Of course if you read the word "Same" in Swedish instead of English, you'll be saying Sámi. As in the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi (for those who can't be bothered figuring out where that is, just picture "the north" of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and add the Kola Peninsula of Russia).

JibJab sues Toyota for using dead presidents. That's what I understand from reading the suit found at Courthousenews. The Toyota ads were created by Hoffman Lewis and ran this spring, while the rapping founding fathers were created by the brothers Even and Gregg Spriridellis way back in 2000. The complaint reads that the Toyota presidents sale graphic style is far too similar to JibJabs own logo - or "nearly identical".

Mark Davidson the Social Marketing & Communications Strategist who reckons "Google+ is a verbatim copy of FriendFeed." seems to have fired the wrong twitter ghost writer last night. I say "seems to" as this is unconfirmed, but if you check his twitter feed he was either having us all on, or something went down.

A few years back Volkswagen motors acquired Rolls Royce. They forgot something important, the trademark newsletter reveals that they failed to acquire the trademark rights. Much mirth is had on adlist when we hear about this. Example:

POSITIONS WANTED. Highly accomplished legal team with experience in the automotive industry. Received high level of recognition for work on Volkswagen-Rolls Royce merger. Will work for food. Please call 1-800-VW1-OOPS.

-- John Backman

the Telegraph noted back in July that Anders Behring Breivik is a bit of a fashion fundamentalist.

Having been refused permission to wear a combat uniform, he has demanded to wear a red Lacoste sweater for his public outings to court or to the police station. He will not wear anything else.

Art 'vandalised' by adverts down in Auckland, check out the many photos of the Newmarket art installation on Osbourne St which has changed from eggs to lightbulbs. Neither the Arts Trust, which owns the fibreglass sculptures, or the artist were notified about the proposed alterations, and they're not happy about it.

Emma Fox from Newmarket Arts Trust says the damage from the advertising "beggars belief".
"This is not just something you can fix in situ - they will have to be recoated. And I don't know what damage the screw tops have done but it doesn't look good," she says.
"No artist wants their artwork to be used in that flippant way. It's defacement."

Way down at the bottom of this Reuters article about XXX domains PETA stakes a claim at PETA.XXX and promises to launch a porn site.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals also signed up. However, instead of blocking its name, said PETA spokeswoman Lindsay Rajt, the organization will launch peta.xxx as a pornography site that draws attention to the plight of animals.

MTV has responded to Abercrombie & Fitch's offer to pay 'The Situation' to not wear their gear, that we talked about yesterday.

Well, a MTV spokesperson snapped back to CNN

It’s a clever PR stunt, and we’d love to work with them on other ways they can leverage Jersey Shore to reach the largest youth audience on television.