Another of my favorite things

Slate runs an occasional article on advertising, which is another of my favorite things. I just ran across this article on Skippy peanut butter's new ad campaign. I haven't seen the ad yet, but for the entire article, click here.

The ad sounds intriguingly bad, but the best part of the article is here:

"Skippy is targeting stoners. I think this is by far the most plausible explanation. My friend (who may or may not have been stoned himself—I make no assumptions) says he saw this ad at around 2:00 a.m. on the Cartoon Network. And I found a chat-board post about the ad from someone who says he saw it at 3:30 a.m. during a Conan rerun. First of all, why show the ad at these hours if the target is children? Second, I ask you this: What do high people love? Late-night television. What else do they love? Snacks. And? Freaky animation with talking animals, like Fritz the Cat and stuff. Finally, where does dancehall come from? Jamaica! See what I mean? If Skippy signs Harold and Kumar, we'll know for certain. And we'll also know what Trish Zenobi means by "pure, unadulterated fun."

The jury is still out on the sound business practice of this kind of marketing. I also particularly enjoyed the pathetic way that corporate people try to sound hip when they are composing press releases that they somehow assume teenagers are going to read.

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In other news, I have been informed that R.E.M.'s next album, entitled Around the Sun will be released in the U.S. on October 5. The band has released a snippet of the first single, which will probably be out in some radio areas this week. The song is entitled "Leaving New York" and doesn't sound great in my opinion--though I've only heard 25 seconds one time.

I, to this point, have no idea why the album was named thusly, nor why the single is called that. One may hope it is not some misguided paean to the victims of 9/11 or something like that.