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April 23, 2005
Poorly-conceived
The new British ad campaign for Diageo Corporation's Smirnoff Ice (murky, unpleasant alcopop) includes a weblog purportedly maintained by their Siberian spokesmodel, "Uri".
It's not so much offensive as poorly-researched and unconvincing. Double-decker buses all over Britain have been sporting, for some weeks, such pearls of "Siberian" wisdom as "Never judge a book by its movie". What were ad-men Bartle Bogle Hogarty going for? It seems to me that Russian stereotypes are there for the applying, but Uri is a strange pastiche of lad culture and Alaskan fur-trapper.
Posted by michele at April 23, 2005 12:09 PM