You surely must have seen that story in the news recently about Richard Gere’s and Shilpa Shetty’s kiss causing public outrage in India. In fact some religious sections of the Indian public were so outraged that they rioted and sent death threats to the pair. Now, regardless of what you believe in, isn’t having had a kiss off Richard Gere/Shilpa Shetty punishment enough for Shilpa Shetty/Richard Gere? No need to send them death threats.

When I first read this story it reminded me of the Kellogg’s Frosties ad with the kid singing the dog-being-kicked-in-the-nuts-by-Yoko-Ono jingle “They’re gonna taste great”. An advert so bad it made my testicles jump back up inside my body every time it I saw it. But I felt the same way about the kid as I did about the Gere/Shetty kiss, just appearing in the advert was punishment enough.

Others, however, did not. Now, when the fact that “the internet is a place where one is free to express one’s feeling” was combined with the fact that “any cracker still able to rub two sticks together can publish to said internet” a hate campaign was started. It spread through blogs and message boards and shockingly culminated in death threats being made against the boy. The ad was dropped. Mistakes had been made but lessons were learnt and no one was hurt. Let’s leave it at that.

But Kellogg’s wont leave it at that. The jingle is back! And, as mind boggling as this is, it’s even worse than before. They’ve done it in an operatic style (“I mean, my Sebastian he’s only 7 but he just loves the opera. We should set it there…”) with an ensemble cast (no one person to focus one’s rage on, clever!). But Kellogg’s it wasn’t just the boy. It was the tune, the terrible, terrible lyrics and the whole sub-Vindaloo marching concept that people hated (OK it was mostly the boy but he’s gone and the advert is still awful). So Kellogg’s please, please don’t so this to us again. Please. Please. Please…

(There’s the gentle sound of sobbing as the Nurse helps Silky back to his bed.)

Judge for yourself.

Just How Bad is this Ad?

(16 votes, average: 4.38 out of 5)