Both ads can be seen at the bottom of this page: http://www.snopes.com/photos/commercials/sportka.asp
Both ads kick ass. Those who find them offensive are people who would never be interested in buying that car. They can pleasure me orally. :wally
Huh? People who are offended by commercials that depict beheading of cats for a laugh are statistically shown to prefer driving anything other than itty bitty sport hatchbacks? What? Oh…target demographics, gotcha. Umm hmmm.
Given the large amount of Doper animal lovers, you might be in for a fight on this one. But not with me. You’re welcome to your opinion (“kick ass”) and I won’t try to change it. I have to wonder, however, if you aren’t looking for a knock-down drag-out flame war by posting this in the Pit.
YEAH! And all you losers that were offended by Brooke Shield’s “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins” ads can suck it!! HA HA HA!!!
Yeah, yeah, big fucking deal. Some mook at O & M sees the eyeball-slicing scene from un Chien Andalou and says to himself, “Hey, I’ve got an idea!”
Let me get this straight: you haven’t the slightest conception of why someone might find such an ad offensive? And even if that’s the case, why would their being offended piss you off personally, to the point where you call them out on a message board?
I realize I’m a pretty simple guy, but I find it hard to get the humor in the cat ad the same way I fail to get the humor in those videos of guy getting their heads lopped off in Iraq. I’m not particularly offended, except for being mildly offended that some marketing drone actually thinks so little of my mind that killing a cat on-screen would make want to own his client’s shitbox little car. Insufficently post-modern, I guess I am.
Isn’t this issue a little old to be rehashed again?
I thought the ad was funny, but definitely in an offensive way. I also think Very Bad Things is one of the funniest movies ever made, so there you go.
And the Sport Ka is a fugly car. It really is.
Well, yes, I have a hard time understanding why somebody would get offended by those ads. Watching a man killing the bird and cat would be pretty gross and disturbing. But it is a freaking car that does the killing! It is hilarious.
I agree, those Iraq videos are gross. But the SportKa ads are really brilliant. You are staying on the surface (the cat/bird killing) and cannot see the meaning of the ad.
Imagine that cars were alive. Naturally, they wouldn’t like pigeons taking a crap on them, or cats clawing their paintjob. Now this car is so evil that takes its revenge.
And it’s not a “shitbox little car”. It has the sharpest chassis since the 205 GTi.
Well, speaking as a guy who once had to deal with the aftermath of a sleeping cat getting caught up in the belts of a V-8 truck engine when I started it up, and a couple of times having picked dead birds out of the grilles of vehicles, I’m afraid that the fact that the violent death is meted out by a machine doesn’t make it any more hilarious for me.
Right, I know I’m not being particularly helpful here, but I think the ads, rather than “brilliant”, are really quite pointlessly sensationalistic. To each his own.
Bah; you poor deprived European folk haven’t a clue what ‘evil’ in a car is. A Dodge Ram SRT-10 pickup with a 500HP V-10 and a live rear axle suspended by cart springs; now that’s evil.
Anyway, you’ll have to forgive me, but I’ve been influenced by my location. I live in Houston, and my current Subaru Impreza, which would be a mid-sized car in Europe, is considered a laughable toy and a minor obstruction to all the duallie pickups and four-ton SUVs on the local freeways.
Wasn’t this beat to death almost 6 months ago?
Thanks for the link. I did a search in the pit. I couldn’t imagine that it would be discussed in MPSIMS
There’s some doubt as to whether they are even ‘official’ (I suspect they were commissioned by Ford, but scrapped as a bad idea before they got anywhere near being broadcast, then leaked by one of the advertising agencies) - I happen to find them needlessly offensive; not enough to make me write ‘why oh why’ letters to my MP, but perhaps enough to make me vote with my feet (as is my right as a consumer, ain’t capitalist market forces great?). If I want to penalise companies that do stupid offensive things by withholding my custom, that’s what I’ll do.
Thanks, but I would rather be eaten alive by hyenas.
I have no strong opinion on the adverts, but I think you’re being a touch naive here. I’ve always thought that those adds (and similar) are delibertly done not with a view to being released on TV but with a view to being ‘supressed’ and ‘leaking’ onto the internet. Viral marketing and all that.
At best they thought better of doing them as TV spots and decided to ‘leak’ them.
If this was truely a scraped ad that was never meant for the public then Ford would be doing a lot more distancing and lawsuit threatening than they did.
And it seems to be working for them after all, we’re still talking about 'em …
SD
Possibly; who knows how many layers of bluff and subterfuge are really involved?
I happen to consider the advertising mantra ‘any publicity is good publicity’ to be calculated and meretricious bullshit - advertisers would claim this, wouldn’t they - it makes it much harder for them to conspicuously fail.