5

Demeter Fragrance Debuting a "Scent of Suffering" Perfume

Demeter

After the Boston Marathon bombing, New York-based perfume company Demeter Fragrance decided they needed to pay tribute to that day's heroes the only way they knew how: by releasing a perfume with the fragrance of smoke and burning rubber.

Darren McCollester/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Why, that's almost as dumb as ...
No. Forget it. No perfume could possibly be dumber.

Some context: Demeter's market is people for whom "pleasant smell" has simply never been enough. Their scents can be loosely categorized into things like "Kindergarten Teacher" (crayons, Play-Doh, and bourbon) and "funeral home" (mildew and earthworms). The "First Response" scent was originally supposed to honor the New York Fire Department, but after the bombing, it suddenly found itself in a bottle dedicated to Boston's police, EMTs, and firefighters. Because great marketing opportunities like a national tragedy don't just crop up every day, ya know.

Now, the smell of smoke and burning rubber are certainly useful smells for triggering the fucking run part of the brain, but as part of a product supporting victims of a recent terrorist attack, they weren't exactly appreciated. Smell is very closely tied to memory -- even the smell of something you really love would turn into nasal night terrors if paired with major trauma.

John Tomaselli/Photos.com
That's why you still throw up whenever you smell orange and latex.

4

Bing Equating Disaster Relief With Free Publicity

Toru Yamanaka / AFP/Getty Images

One day after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Bing announced via Twitter their intention to donate to the victims of the disaster. But whereas most companies just gave money and left it at that, Bing decided to channel Hannibal Lecter and make their donation quid pro quo; specifically, they pledged a donation of $1 per retweet of their initial tweet, all the way up to the princely sum of $100,000.

via Switched.com

That's 0.125 percent of Bing's initial advertising budget. And sure, it's a good chunk of cash, but remember: That's the maximum. Bing would need 100,000 retweets to hit the limit, so this tweet would have to be one of the top three most popular tweets of all time before the donation would be notable, so it was way more likely Microsoft was going to get away with donating a paltry two or three grand. Naturally, people got pretty pissed, because even in hives of unmitigated evil and cretinism like the Internet, it's typically frowned upon to use the suffering of thousands as leverage in your bid for free publicity.

Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images News/Getty Images
And that's on top of the suffering of the thousands who use Bing.

3

A U.K. Terror Hotline Advising Everybody to Mistrust Their Neighbors

London Metropolitan Police

In 2010, Great Britain's Association of Chief Police Officers began recording a series of radio PSAs advertising an anti-terrorism hotline by informing suspicious Brits of what kind of behavior they should be reporting. According to one radio spot, signs that your neighbors may be plotting against the Queen included consistently paying for things with cash instead of a debit card, keeping to themselves, and keeping their curtains drawn. Remember: If you can't see their dong, what else might they be hiding?

The ads themselves admitted that this stuff "may mean nothing" but that "together, they all add up to you having suspicions," so you should obviously report them. Hell, they want you to report all your suspicions, about anything anyone does around you, and probably things you're only imagining they did. After all, these people did studies, and science doesn't lie: Anyone who displays even the slightest hint of suspicious activity, financial responsibility, or introversion is about to strap a bomb to his chest and ruin everyone's day -- just as soon as he finishes balancing his checkbook and getting over his agoraphobia.

2

White Celebrities Declaring Themselves "African"

via Clutch Magazine

In 2006, Alicia Keys' charity Keep a Child Alive launched the "I Am African" campaign, centered on the idea that since humanity itself originated in Africa, we're all one big African family. But Africa is filled with families, with hundreds of wildly disparate ethnic groups, all with very different cultures, so conveying that diversity with images was difficult -- or at least would have been, if Keep a Child Alive had given even the slightest glimmer of a fuck about that.

via Clutch Magazine
I am the winds of the Serengeti
I am the sweat of the jungle man
I am the tears of Nelson Mandela
I am the lost boy of the Sudan!

1

The E.U. Promoting the Need for Unity (Because of Those Savage Foreigners)

European Commission

In 2012, the European Commission released "Growing Together," a viral ad to promote the image of the E.U. as a force for peace in a dangerous world. The video begins with a pretty brunette sporting a Kill Bill-style yellow track suit, walking alone through an abandoned train station.