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Ban this sick stunt
Nov. 23rd, 2006 10:43 amStartling news in yesterday's Evening Standard:
Nov. 23rd, 2006
News in Briefs
Nov. 23rd, 2006 11:10 amZoo poisons lion cubs to cut costsNo, it’s not “really good”, is it? I might even venture to say that culling the cubs of an endangered species when your only job is to protect them was “bad”.
Ethiopia’s black lions are being culled and sold on to taxidermists by an Ethiopian zoo, despite the continuing threat to the long-term survival of the species. A lack of finances and zoo space has resulted in the cull of the Abyssinian lion population, according to the administrator of Addis Ababa’s zoo.
Muhedin Abdulaziz, the zoo’s administrator, said his US$64,000 budget was simply not enough to provide for more than 16 adult lions, which cannot be reintroduced to the wild. “There is a shortage of place and a shortage of budget and when they are over-populated, most of the time we send them to taxidermists,” he said. “It is not really good, but we do this is because of the problems we have. For the time being our immediate solution is to send them to the taxidermists, but the final and best solution is to extend the zoo into a wider area.”
My friend L has sent me this bomb threat assessment form, taken from a focus group facility in Los Angeles. Most such forms demand you ask the same questions of the caller, but only in Hollywood would it go into as much lavish detail about their voice. It’s less a terrorism procedure than a casting call. There may as well be an extra tick box: “Has an agent ___”.
By chance, this week I came across something else L passed on to me, about eight years ago now. We met in the pub after he had finished for the day at the marketing company he was working for. He had been crying laughing for several hours, ever since one of his colleagues had called him over and said, “What do you think of this?” They were working on a campaign for BT, who, like McDonald’s, run many different accounts with different agencies. The ad is for... actually, I forget exactly what it’s for. It was something to do with bereavement counselling, but how BT were involved now escapes me. All I know is that this battered photocopy L ran off before fleeing the building helpless with laughter is probably all that survives of this well-intentioned but terrible, clunking idea for an ad campaign that never made it to a magazine near you.
( ... )
By chance, this week I came across something else L passed on to me, about eight years ago now. We met in the pub after he had finished for the day at the marketing company he was working for. He had been crying laughing for several hours, ever since one of his colleagues had called him over and said, “What do you think of this?” They were working on a campaign for BT, who, like McDonald’s, run many different accounts with different agencies. The ad is for... actually, I forget exactly what it’s for. It was something to do with bereavement counselling, but how BT were involved now escapes me. All I know is that this battered photocopy L ran off before fleeing the building helpless with laughter is probably all that survives of this well-intentioned but terrible, clunking idea for an ad campaign that never made it to a magazine near you.
( ... )
