While you were sleeping....

OK, so maybe you were not sleeping, but I was. I feel it has been a while since I reviewed ads around town chiefly due to my heavy schedule, but also due to the success of Archewallogy (Thank you for that) and that there has been almost nothing of interest for a long time... But now, here goes:

The tobacco control initiative come up with this ad about second hand smoking... Whether it is appealing or not, or creative or not is not the point, I just hope that stupid parents will understand what they are doing to their infants and children not just with the cigarettes but with the narguileh as well.

Then comes the BLF "fixed" interest rate with the Arabic headline that goes "our interest rate does not play" (Which translates into "fixed"), cute, informative and not over the top creative (Which is just as well because people would understand it, feel smart that they understood it, and get to explain it to the next guy over because they are oh-so-smart for understanding creative ads).

Then the very, very Lebanese Nissan Sunny commercial. In terms of oriental semiotics, this one hits the jackpot. It blends traditional Arabic folk singing (Zajal) which starts with "ooof, ooof, ooof" with the French word "Offre", features a guy in traditional Lebanese clothing (Quite popular in the restaurants wanting to portray a "mock" or "touristic" Lebanese feel but no one would wear it in real life) and damn, it takes a Lebanese to understand this ad and find it humourous!.... It all reminds me of the Dabke (Traditional Lebanese dance) Techno concept which was launched by Philippe Araktingi in his movie "Bosta" - a mixture of everything to the point of dilution!