Results tagged “obay”

Phase Two of the much-blogged Obay campaign is hitting the streets, having been "unveiled" in a press conference at Centennial College this morning. Linda Franklin, President & CEO of Colleges Ontario—the advocate for the province's 24 colleges of applied arts and technology—was there to divulge details of the "top secret" campaign. Shocker: it has to do with parental mind control.

The above "Obey Spray" illustration is one of a series of Madvertisements (also featuring products such as "Empowermints" and conditions such as "Excessive Patriotism Disorder") by media tigress Carly Stasko, originally published in the January/February 2002 issue of This Magazine. Look familiar? Says Stasko of the "Obay" campaign for Ontario colleges, they're "so similar that I'm wondering if we just had the same idea or if they have riffed off of my original." (We think it's probably the former, but it wouldn't at all surprise us if someone at Smith Roberts had a subscription to This and has been storing the Madvertisements in his or her unconscious for years.) The photo, by the way, is a young Dave Meslin.

Since fake pharmaceutical ads for a drug called "Obay" starting appearing across Ontario (and elsewhere) last week, everyone from street artist Frank Shepard Fairey (aka OBEY) to Scientologists to comedian Maggie Cassella has been fingered as the culprit behind them.

At first we assumed it was Scientology. After all, who else has the money to produce and purchase space for such glossy anti-pharmaceutical ads, which have been popping up all over transit shelters and buses in Ontario and Montreal? Google wasn't much help, and their Blog Search just pointed us to other people as perplexed as we were. And poor spellers with domination fantasies.