Examples of Controversial Advertisements

Over the years there have been many controversial and close to the knuckle examples of advertising that some companies choose to release to the public. Here are some good examples of controversial advertisements and my thoughts on them.

Mettiamoc Latesta ‘Dead Santa’:

This advertisement that features the severed idol of childhood hero Santa Claus was used to advertise an Italian campaign called Mettiamoci La Testa.
I can definitely see why this advertisement would be deemed as inappropriate because it uses a shock image that would easily scare children as well as some more venerable adults. The company kept this severed head advertisement campaign for some time and all together five advertisements were produced to promote the website www.mettiamocilatesta.it

What Are You Doing To Yourself?:

NSW Health produced these series of advertising campaigns, which is part of the Australian governments efforts to promote responsible drinking with many young adults in Australia.

The adverts would usually show some sort of irresponsible activities that were classed as something that could happen when you drink too much. These activities include disorderly behaviour such as street fights, dangerous driving as well as inappropriate behaviour that are linked to being drunk.

Popular Australian photographer Gary Sheppard who is known for many of his advertisement campaign photography photographed the advertisements.

United Colors of Benetton:

United Colors of Benetton have always been known for their experimental style of advertisements and they love to use a lot of shock photography in efforts to promote the brand to it’s full potential.
Since the late 80’s the company has used shock tactics not to promote the products but to spread awareness on worldwide problems at the time. For example in 1992 the company released an advert that showed an AIDS patient dying whilst surrounded by his family. The image was nominated for many awards and was later put into Life Magazines collection of 100 Photos that Changed the World. The image came under a lot of ridicule because of the religious imagery that was involved. It was said that the AIDS patient was made to look like Jesus with his disciples; of course this enraged a lot of people.

Kinetic Typography

Kinetic Typography is the creation of moving type within film. The art form is used a lot within the film industry in beginning and end credits.

The art form itself is actually a lot older than people would think it is. Early examples of kinetic typography can be traced back to 1899 when infamous filmmakers such as George Melies had used a mix of cinematic transition effects and static text to give an effect that the text is actually moving.

Even though the art form had been played with in the past, it was never looked upon as being used to it’s full effect. It was only in the 60’s when American graphic designer, Saul Bass, started to produce his own title sequences for many filmmakers at the time such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick.
Bass’ most famous title sequence to date would have to be the one that he produced for the Alfred Hitchcock film ‘North by Northwest’ where a condensed font is used to move across the opening film imagery of a New York building. Now that the art form had been introduced to the commercial film industry it began to become more commonly used by many other filmmakers. Bass went onto produce title sequences for many classic movies such as ‘Big’ and ‘Goodfellas’.

Kinetic typography in recent years is still very popular especially with amateur filmmakers and graphic designers that are starting to make a move into motion graphics as a whole because kinetic typography is a very good starting point for motion graphics. With programmes like Adobe After Effects it has become fun and easy to create great looking moving typography in less than a day.

Kinetic typography is still used within commercial films; for example, the ‘Catch Me If You Can’ title sequences involve both typography and vector shapes. But the art form has become very popular with online promotion. An example of this can be Cee-Lo Green single ‘F**k You’. Before an official video was made for the song, a kinetic typography video was made and released online via YouTube and received over 6,000,000 views in the space of 3 months.

With advancements in design technology and with new motion artists appearing on the commercial design scene, I think kinetic typography are going to be around for a long time.