Repent: the Pope is pissed off at you

Hey ad execs, the Pope is not happy with you. (Remember, we at AdFreak only write about the ad industry; we are not actually members of it, and—in this instance—we felt it would be appropriate to distance ourselves from all of you sinners.) Anyway, seems the pontiff, while visiting a soup kitchen in Rome the other day, lashed out at you advertising types for “creating images of false joy over Christmas, instead of concentrating on God's message.” But fortunately, at least one Italian ad exec saw fit to give the Pope a quick lesson on modern-day advertising. Emanuele Pirella, of Lowe Pirella, said in La Repubblica: "The sort of sugary adverts where everyone is happy, where we wake up in the morning and everyone is smiling have been gone for ages. They were typical of the 1980s. Nowadays we don't create fictions, but something really recognisable, which the public can empathise with." He then went onto describe what killed the shaky camera technique and how there aren’t even ads being aired anymore that shoot gerbils out of cannons. Not. (Visual from the Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club site.)

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

January 8, 2007 | Permalink