2 min readSep 22, 2009 01:03 AM IST
First published on: Sep 22, 2009 at 01:03 AM IST
Hitler is in the news again. This time,hes been caught in bed. According to newswires,Das Comitee,a Hamburg advertising agency has come out with a 45-second AIDS commercial aired on German TV and in cinemas recently,for awareness group Regenbogen. It shows a couple having sex and as the ad progresses,the mans face turns into Hitlers as he looks straight into the camera. The tagline is AIDS is a Mass Murderer.
Organisations across Europe who represent people suffering with AIDS have condemned the ad,saying it only adds to the shame that people with AIDS already suffer from. And Hitler is not the only one who is shown in bed with the woman. In poster versions of the ad,Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Iraqs Saddam Hussein have also been used.
Hitler has been used before to spread health awareness: an ad for Africa Directo showed Hitlers face made up of thousands of mosquitoes. The line goes,Nothing and no one,takes as many lives as malaria. In Brazil,his face is made out of cigarettes for an anti-smoking ad.
Though historys bad boys club has been used as a money spinner by many advertisers,Hitler tops the list. His egregious face has been used to sell anything from wine Italian winery Alessandro Lunardelli,created a line of wines named after him as well as Napoleon,Winston Churchill,Che Guevara and hotel suites to anti-stress tea Turkish Rasayana anti-stress tea shows him in a floral shirt.
What is ironic is that Hitler and his propaganda minister,Joseph Goebbels,looked to American advertising for inspiration. Carrie McLaren co-author of Ad Nauseam: A Survivors Guide to American Consumer Culture wrote that in its July 20,1933,issue,Printers Ink,one of the lead advertising trade journals of its time,spoke approvingly of Hitlers advertising methods. Hitler has depended almost entirely upon slogans made effective by reiteration,made general by American advertising methods.
Just what is it about him that clicks? As Das Comitee said to the newswires its shock value,designed to scare people into doing the right thing.
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