Is It Any Good?

The age.com.au advertising campaign

18 Sep 2007

Sophie Black writes:

This lady looks kind of bummed.  Either her workstation is under attack from the Lilliput 5th infantry, or this is an advertisement for really depressing news, straight to your laptop.

Who’d be tempted to stray from the average three hours of quality FacebookMySpaceEbayYouTubeAnythingOtherThanWork time to read about this story in which a Toyota Corolla has been dropped from a helicopter to the great distress of that poor midget with her head in her hands? Why not emphasise Fairfax’s comprehensive coverage by including a tiny sick baby, a suicide bomber, a tiny cancer cluster and a small dead puppy strewn across the desk?

And we all know that if this billboard was a true representation of The Age online, there’d be a miniature Britney gyrating on the base of that lamp, a little polar bear hanging off a diminutive (to scale) iceberg and, hiding behind the mouse, a small(er) dwarf with his microscopic penis stuck in a vacuum cleaner.

But perhaps our sad friend’s demeanour has nothing to do with the accident unfolding all over her mousepad. Perhaps she’s just read Jim Schembri’s latest column. Loftily entitled "Price of Human Dignity", it is in fact 700 words chronicling the writer’s attempt to prise a bag of jelly babies out of a vending machine. Depressing? Yes indeed.

Back to listing