Pizza chain kills ad featuring zombie celebs

New Zealand’s Hell Pizza chain has buried an ad “showing the corpses of actor Heath Ledger, Britain’s Queen Mother and Mount Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary dancing on a grave.” The ad on the company’s website had all three emerging from graves and then dancing to Michael Jackson’s song “Thriller.”

FWIW, “Last year, complaints forced [the company] to withdraw billboards showing Adolf Hitler clutching a slice of pizza in a Nazi salute.”

As David St. Hubbins put it, ” It’s such a fine line between stupid, and clever.” Except in this case.

That said, I was amused by the Sell Your Soul offer on the website:

Your soul doesn’t do much. You can’t feel it. You can’t see it. It sucks at making coffee, and when you’re buggered after a hard day, it’ll never have dinner on the table. So give it to us. Then you can begin your descent into HELL. The deeper you go, the more retribution you’ll receive for your measly soul. The retribution could be anything from free morsels of food to exclusive access to random stuff. That all depends on how good you are at being bad. And if you make it right into the darkest depths of HELL, then you’ll receive free pizza for life. So sell your soul to us.

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Death is the hottest trend in marketing

Oddly enough, sports leads the pack in making a buck by showing how to truly be a die-hard fan.

It started a few years ago with the advent of coffins with sports logos on them but mere licensing wasn’t enough for one soccer/football team. Next month, the Barcelona-based Primera Liga club — aka Espanyol — will open a repository for 20,000 fans’ ashes at their new stadium Cornella-El Prat. “The columbarium will occupy 1,000 square metres over three floors in a corner section of the stadium. There will be 5,000 niches available, each capable of holding four urns.” The team expects to make $6.9 million over the next 15 years from this. As gruesome as this sounds, it has to be noted that sports teams didn’t come up with this idea. They are simply responding to demand from the fans.

It is a tribute to the marketers everywhere that an increasing number of people want their brand identity known even when they are forgotten. Thus, the Hello Kitty headstone.

Sorry, but I think Kuromi is more brand appropriate.

Coffins and urns are clearly the co-branding channel of choice here. A gentlemen in Illinois pre-ordered a Pabst Blue Ribbon casket. Look closely at the picture and you will see he has a fondness for more than just PBR. This should make for an interesting discussion should he ever arrive at an AA meeting.

If you cannot find the brand of choice, contact Creative Coffins in the UK which offers a line of customized (or “bespoke”) coffins. Some of their offerings:

More after the jump…

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