Wellington Airport's rebranding exercise: And the point is?

I’m not a shareholder in Wellington Airport but if I was, I’d be getting up on my hind legs at the next annual meeting to object to an extravagant promotional charade that demonstrates how completely the corporate sector has been captured (or should I say conned?) by the twin forces of marketing hucksterism and feel-good wokery.

The online platform Stop Press, which uncritically chronicles all the absurdities perpetrated by the bullshit artists of the PR and advertising industries, reports that the airport company is undertaking a rebranding exercise in which it will become “WLG – a portal to the future”.

There’s nothing in the Stop Press item to indicate why it was deemed necessary to change the brand. “Wellington Airport” describes perfectly well what the company does and I confidently predict that that’s how it will continue to be known long into the future. But the PR and advertising industries derive a lot of their income by suckering gullible corporate clients into pointless rebranding exercises and this seems a classic example.

But it goes far beyond that, because the rebranding incorporates an element of fashionable virtue-signalling that crosses into the realms of pure make-believe. I’ll let Stop Press take up the story – but be warned: it’s a textbook piece of flatulent PR puffery.

Two decades ago, the airport in the capital rebranded with a new positioning, “Wild at Heart,” which captured the spirit of the place and land where it stands.

Alongside brand storyteller Everyone and Kura Moeahu (Te Atiawa, Nga Ruahine, Taranaki-tuturu, Ngati Mutunga, Ngati Tama & Ngati Toa), Wellington Airport has continued the narrative by delving into the ancestry of the harbour and the forces and guardians that shaped it.

The aim is to capture Wellington Airport Rangitatau as WLG, a portal to the future.

“The best stories start with listening,” says Cameron Sanders, Managing Director, Everyone. “We were introduced to the story of the legendary bird Te Manu Muramura and the rich narratives and graphic forms that are etched into the land, water and sky here.

“And we also heard the passion and commitment of airport staff, Wellingtonians, local government and local artists when they told us what the airport means to them and how it relates to the city.”

Matt Clarke, CEO, Wellington Airport adds that the airport has always been filled with stories.

“But we really haven’t had any Mana Whenua stories, stories of the land beneath the airport, and that’s something we’re really looking to introduce to the terminal and the welcome to the city.”

Another revelation was the proximity between Rangitatau, the ancient portal the bird spirit took to the beyond, and the Airport’s place. The design team looked to draw a direct parallel between the power of this legendary portal and the role of the Airport as the region’s portal, a gateway to central New Zealand.

“Collaborating closely with local artist Manu Winata (Ngāti Raukawa, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa), we explored the concept of imagining the gateway of Rangitatau – our portal to the universe,” says Everyone Creative Director Andrew Treder.

“We created a suite of dimensional light portals that illustrated the entirety of the origin story, passing through the realms of sea, land and sky. Through this, we have looked to position Rangitatau as a portal to the universe for manuhiri returning home, a gateway to central New Zealand and a launch pad for those setting off to explore new horizons.”

As air technology continues to evolve, the team wanted to acknowledge that the future is aerial, and that WLG is very much part of that.

“We hope that our Airport, Wellingtonians, and manuhiri can reflect on, share and contribute to this living narrative,” says Everyone Producer Nathan Blundell. “The launch video re-tells the origins of Wellington Harbour while inspiring its next chapter, reflecting a wish from mana whenua that these stories don’t remain as once-upon-a-time tales, but are shared in a present context and continue to evolve.”

“The new brand identity, the many touchpoints and of course the beautiful broader visual language have all been designed to honour everything that got the Airport to this point, and all that is yet to come,” explains Cam Sanders.

“The new telling of this airport’s story is exciting, confident and vibrant. We’ve built on the emotion of Wild at Heart, but with the insights of all involved, we’ve expressed WLG as an Airport of Tomorrow and a place of unparalleled aerial activation. Our two-decade partnership with WLG has been one of passion, innovation, and collaboration. We can’t wait to see where the journey leads next.”

Let’s try to unpick some of this preposterous gibberish. “The ancestry of the harbour and the forces and guardians that shaped it”, for instance. The harbour is not a person, therefore has no ancestors. The forces that shaped it were geological. The idea that it was shaped by “guardians” is romantic tosh, deployed here to satisfy Wellington Airport’s desperate desire to be seen as culturally sensitive.

In any case, how does the harbour come into it? Wellington Airport was the creation of engineers and contractors who flattened Rongotai Hill, demolished or relocated 180 houses and shifted enormous amounts of earth to create a flat space for planes to land on. The harbour just happens to be adjacent. Was this a case of the rebranding team deciding the construction of the airport provided no suitably inspiring cultural narrative and focusing on the harbour instead, even though it’s not integral to the airport story?

“We were introduced to the story of the legendary bird Te Manu Muramura and the rich narratives and graphic forms that are etched into the land, water and sky here.” Yes, but what does this actually mean? Exactly what “rich narratives” are etched into the land, water and sky, and how do they relate to a company whose function is simply to run a safe, efficient and profitable airport? Who has heard of Te Manu Muramura (I hadn’t) and what relevance does he/she have to a 21st century aviation business? (I’m not knocking or demeaning Maori myths and legends here; they are a valued and unique part of our heritage. I’m just tired of them being opportunistically exploited for spurious purposes.)

Another revelation was the proximity between Rangitatau, the ancient portal the bird spirit took to the beyond, and the Airport’s place. The design team looked to draw a direct parallel between the power of this legendary portal and the role of the Airport as the region’s portal, a gateway to central New Zealand.

I had to look up Rangitatau. It was the name of a pa that once overlooked Tarakena Bay, which is tucked around the headland immediately east of the airport. Here we go again – straining to find a connection with Maori mythology where there is none. It may have suited the “design team” to convince themselves of such a connection, but no one else (with the exception, perhaps, of credulous Wellington Airport executives such as Matt Clarke) is going to buy it.

“We created a suite of dimensional light portals that illustrated the entirety of the origin story, passing through the realms of sea, land and sky. Through this, we have looked to position Rangitatau as a portal to the universe for manuhiri returning home, a gateway to central New Zealand and a launch pad for those setting off to explore new horizons.”

This poetic piece of spin relates to the 5-minute video produced – no doubt at great expense – to accompany the “rebranding”. Again, the video draws heavily on Maori mythology relating to the creation of Wellington Harbour – or Te Whanganui-a-Tara, if you prefer – and goes so far as to imply the creation of the airport was inspired by events in Maori legend. I’m sure that would have come as a revelation to the engineers and contractors who built it.

As for the rest of the comically pretentious launch material reproduced in the Stop Press report, I marvel that whoever wrote it managed to do so with a straight face. But the tragedy is that they probably believe their own bullshit.

Here’s my prediction. The “rebranding” will serve no purpose beyond gratifying the egos of the people who commissioned and produced it. Given that no industry celebrates itself more enthusiastically than the advertising business, the video will almost certainly win a prize (and in the process, reinforce my contention that “award-winning” are the two most meaningless words in the English language). But the entire grandiose exercise will pass unnoticed by the rest of the world, including the countless thousands of people who use Wellington Airport. In which case, can someone please explain what the point is?

Footnote: It occurred to me after publishing this post that Wellington International Airport Ltd is not a listed company, being jointly owned by Infratil and Wellington City Council. There would therefore presumably be no annual meeting at which shareholders could air their gripes. Nonetheless, my points stand.

Funding our own indoctrination

A couple of weeks ago I was confronted by an unusually puerile full-page advertisement in the local paper. I say “unusually” because it goes without saying that a lot of advertising, on TV especially, could most charitably be described as less than cerebral. But this took infantilism in advertising to a new low.

The text was written as if intended for pre-schoolers. But rather than try to convey the tone of this nonsensical doggerel with a mere excerpt, I’ll reproduce it in its entirety:

IMAGINE AOTEAROA WITHOUT GOOD WATER

What a stink as place that would be.

Trout would be grumpy.

Boating no fun.

And dirty ducks a sad sight to see.

Mean as manus wouldn’t be mean.

Showers a complete waste of time.

Bathrooms would be just rooms.

Togs just undies.

And our awa, all filthy with slime.

 

That’s why we’ve got a plan,

‘cos we’re water’s biggest fan.

So let’s make it better than fine.

The accompanying illustrations, crudely drawn comic-style, showed a pipe belching noxious-looking waste into a river, a duck swimming through sludge and a horrified child bather coated in muck, all eye-catchingly presented in full colour.

It finished with the inspirational slogan “Better Water is Better for Everyone”, complete with a Maori translation for the benefit of the many readers who don’t understand English.

You may have figured out by now that it was a government ad promoting the Three Waters project, and I now note that TV viewers are being bombarded with an animated version.

That’s right: we’re paying for an extravagant advertising campaign aimed at persuading us that the government’s grab for control over the nation’s water infrastructure is in our own best interests.

Even as the government is going through the motions of seeking endorsement from the 67 local authorities that stand to lose control over a crucial part of their operations, it’s trying to go around them by pitching directly to us – in effect, circumventing its own process. And we’re picking up the tab – in other words, funding our own indoctrination.

If nothing else impresses you about Jacinda Ardern’s government, you have to gasp at its sheer hubris. This is a government that thinks the public so passive and malleable that it can get away with anything.

Regardless of what you think about the Three Waters proposal (and my main concern, as with many of this government’s initiatives, is that it represents a further centralisation of power and erosion of local autonomy), it’s a breathtakingly brazen misuse of taxpayers’ money.

There might be a case for a fact-based information campaign (Ha! Faint chance, I hear you say) setting out the arguments for and against the plan. That might have provided some helpful context for the debate the country needs to have before deciding whether Three Waters is worth supporting.

But this campaign doesn’t pretend to explain anything. It doesn’t have so much as a fig-leaf of legitimacy. It’s targeted at the same gormless, credulous lot who swoon with admiration for Greta Thunberg. Not content with misusing our money, the government and its advertising agency (Who are they? They should be named and shamed) insult the nation’s intelligence with a propaganda campaign that’s thumb-suckingly fatuous.  

And as long as we’re paying to subject ourselves to a blatantly politicised ad campaign, is it too much to expect that it should at least be semi-literate?

“Stink as” and “mean as” would make marginally more sense – only marginally, mind you – if they were written as stink-as and mean-as, indicating that the expressions were adjectival. And what about that culturally inappropriate “s” on “manus”? Why would the copy writer carefully omit the “s” when he/she pluralised the Maori word for river (awa), recognising that there’s no “s” in te reo, but leave it on the word for bird?

I guess this is the sort of confused mess that sub-literate advertising creatives (as they like to call themselves) get into when they try to ingratiate themselves with a target audience that never reads newspapers anyway. Then there’s “’cos we’re [plural] water’s biggest fan [singular]” – but now I’m starting to sound like a grammar Nazi.

The final affront in all this is the knowledge that the ad agency will have banked a preposterous sum of money for this juvenile dreck. How do I know? Because that’s what ad agencies do. The Three Waters campaign is further proof (not that it was needed) that in the advertising racket, there’s no ad too inane and no client too gullible.

Footnote (added July 11): I see $3.5 million has been budgeted for the advertising campaign. My case rests.

The advertising industry's suspiciously sudden embrace of diversity

Noticed anything different about TV commercials lately?

Take a look at the people in them. They used to be overwhelmingly white – in fact almost blindingly so. Not anymore.

From being virtually invisible in TV advertising, ethnic minorities – Maori, Pasifika, Indian, Chinese, African – are now highly conspicuous.

We’re seeing other types of diversity too, with hints that some of the characters in our TV commercials are gay and lesbian. Nothing too overt, mind you.

This is not, in itself, a bad thing. We’re now seeing commercials that more accurately reflect New Zealand as it is.

We live in one of the world’s most diverse societies. In the last Census (2018), 1.2 million of us - that's 25 per cent - were born overseas. New Zealand is home to people of more than 200 ethnicities. 

The number of New Zealanders who see themselves as European is in steady decline – down from 74 per cent in 2013 to 70 percent in 2018. It seems ad agencies have only recently woken up to these facts.

If anything, the ad industry has swung from one misrepresentation to another. Ethnic minorities that were previously ignored are now centre-stage, but they're still minorities - so the society we see reflected in TV commercials in 2021 is probably no more an accurate mirror of reality than the one we saw when white faces predominated. It’s the old, familiar pendulum effect.

What’s driven this change? Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a simple case of ad agencies belatedly realising that the people shown in TV commercials no longer reflect New Zealand as it really is.

If that were the case, the worst they could be accused of is being slow off the mark, and perhaps trying to atone by over-correcting. But I think there’s something else going on here.

I suspect that ethnic minorities are suddenly being showcased not so much because it’s the right thing to do, but because the advertising industry is terrified of being labelled as racist, white supremacist and insufficiently inclusive. In other words, the change is probably driven by fear of the aggressive ideological phenomenon we know as wokery.

What gives the game away is the speed with which this has happened. It’s not as if the transformation of New Zealand society, from overwhelmingly European to vibrantly multicultural, happened suddenly; it’s been going on for years, if not decades, under the industry’s noses.

What has suddenly changed is the slavish, craven and witless embrace of identity politics that has swept through government, academia, the media, the arts, the corporate sector and even sport. In effectively signing up to this woke agenda, the advertising industry is playing it safe by going with the crowd.

This should surprise no one. The advertising business likes to celebrate itself as edgy, idiosyncratic and anarchic, but it strikes me as deeply conformist, risk-averse and prone to groupthink. Its suspiciously abrupt, across-the-board conversion to the virtues of diversity suggests much the same level of fearlessly independent thought as you’d find in a mob of romney ewes.

 

Second thoughts on peak lunacy

There have been a couple of occasions recently when I speculated that we had reached peak lunacy in the so-called culture wars. It turns out I was woefully wrong and pathetically over-optimistic.

New heights of madness are scaled almost weekly, the latest being the Advertising Standards Authority’s ruling that a Streets advertising sign proclaiming that “ice cream makes you happy” should be removed because “the implicit claim that there is a link between ice cream and happiness could potentially undermine the health and wellbeing of consumers”.

Good grief. It’s bad enough that some wretched soul felt motivated to complain that the ad promoted “an unhealthy relationship with food”, but infinitely more depressing that the ASA agreed. And to think I was feeling sympathetic for the advertising watchdog because it had recently been under attack from Andrew “Sour Grapes” Little after it turned down his complaint against a newspaper ad placed by National MP Nick Smith relating to Pike River (which itself qualifies for inclusion on the peak lunacy index, but that’s another story).

Unilever Australasia, which owns the Streets brand, has announced it will appeal. That’s good, but it’s tragic that we must now rely on a multinational corporate to defend free speech in advertising.

As for me, I’m forced to recalibrate my peak lunacy barometer. There’s clearly some way to go before the craziness starts to subside.

It's Kevin Roberts' turn to be thrown to the wolves

I’m no fan of Kevin Roberts. He’s a tireless self-promoter whose talent for bullshit is breathtaking even by advertising industry standards. But the extraordinary furore over his comments on gender diversity illustrates the dangerous extent to which business is now held hostage by the po-faced forces of political correctness.

Roberts, the executive chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi, has been asked to take leave of absence for saying, in quite mild and unexceptionable terms, that the debate over gender diversity in the advertising business is over.

It seems that in business these days, you’re allowed to express an opinion only if it’s the right one.

We know that the enforcers of political correctness are intolerant of any departure from ideological orthodoxy. That’s been the case for a long time. What’s relatively new, and frightening, is that business leaders are now so intimidated that they capitulate without firing a shot.  

The lesson is clear. Roberts has been hung out to dry as a lesson to anyone else who might be tempted to express a legitimate opinion. And there’s another, even more potent, lesson here: no one is too big to be safe. Even Roberts’ rarefied status in the advertising world wasn’t enough to protect him once the Harpies had him in their sights.

Loyalty? Forget about it.

The irony is that Roberts may not have been downplaying women’s legitimate career ambitions at all, but instead was wondering aloud whether there were better options for women than relentlessly pursuing advancement as men do. That was the interpretation placed on his remarks in a discussion (between women, as it happened) that I heard on the BBC.

Not that it matters. Men are not permitted to discuss such things. As columnist Grace Dent put it in Britain’s Independent, Roberts has been escorted to “Shamed Man Gulag #231, policed by a number of perma-furious turquoise-haired fourth-wave feminists”.

New Zealanders should recognise this pattern of events, because we’ve been here before. In 2011, Northern Employers and Manufacturers Association head Alasdair Thompson was publicly crucified for suggesting that menstruation caused women to take sick leave. Shamefully, he lost his job as a result. 

Thompson was thrown to the wolves by the very people who should have supported him and now Roberts has suffered a similar fate. Clearly, no one should expect the gutless business sector to stand up for people’s right to free speech. 

Taking us for a ride with our own cash

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, January 28.)

We have a pronounced aversion to TV commercials in our house. It’s the job of whoever is in possession of the remote to hit the “mute” button the moment an ad comes on screen.

Failure to do so earns a look of stern reproof – even sharp words if the reaction time is too slow.

I don’t know where my wife’s abhorrence of commercials comes from, but in my case I think it must be inherited. Way back in the 1960s, long before the first remote control units hit the market, my father made his own.

He wired the necessary bits and pieces and packed them into a decorative little pot that had previously contained Alberto V05 shampoo. In the lid he mounted an old-fashioned switch.

The device sat on a little table beside Dad’s armchair and was connected to the TV set by a cable that ran under the carpet. The moment the ads started, click! Blessed silence.

Dad was an electrical engineer by profession and made a lot of ingenious gadgets, but I reckon that was his crowning achievement.

The mute function is even more precious now than it was then. In fact we often leave it on through entire programmes, occasionally glancing up from whatever we’re reading just in case a subversive TV programmer has breached policy by showing something that isn’t a complete insult to taste or intelligence. Needless to say, they never do.

But even with the sound off, you can’t help occasionally noticing what’s on screen. And over the holiday period, my attention was captured by a commercial showing water being poured into a glass accompanied by the caption “Not Beersies”.

I briefly considered the possibility that this was an advertising campaign aimed at persuading everyone to drink water instead of beer, but dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Who would waste money on something so cringingly patronising?

The juvenile language – “beersies” – suggested some sort of spoof. I concluded it must be a satirical ad, the purpose of which wouldn’t be clear unless I turned the sound on – something I wasn’t prepared to do.

Well, more fool me. I must have been the only mug in New Zealand not to realise that a substantial sum of public money – our money – had been blown on a po-faced social engineering campaign exhorting us to do just that: drink water instead of beer.

Documents obtained by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union, a lobby group set up to expose wasteful use of taxpayers’ money, show that the campaign cost at least $1.2 million. That doesn’t include advertising agency fees, which were treated as confidential because of commercial sensitivity.

Moralistic advertising campaigns designed to change our behaviour are a gold mine for the advertising industry. But whether they have any impact is another matter.

This one, which was financed by the Health Promotion Agency, was clearly predicated on the assumptions that we’re a nation of drunks – which statistics prove isn’t true – and that a TV advertising campaign will magically convince us to change our ways, which is another highly suspect proposition.

Ironically, the Taxpayers’ Union also obtained the results of focus group research which showed that the people least likely to take notice of the campaign were “entrenched, high-risk drinkers” – the one group whose drinking behaviour needs changing.

So if anyone is going to be influenced by the commercials, which is improbable, it’s likely to be people whose drinking actually isn’t a problem. And as the Taxpayers’ Union points out, beer consumption is in steady decline anyway, although you won’t hear the alarmist wowser lobby mention that.

More damningly, the Health Promotion Agency disclosed that it conducts no cost-benefit analysis of its campaigns. In other words, no one knows whether the silly “Not Beersies” ads will make a blind bit of difference.

The HPA takes refuge in woolly, imprecise phraseology such as “long-term culture change”. That way it can’t be pinned down.

I’ve now made the supreme sacrifice by watching the ads – all six of them – on You Tube, with the sound on, and they confirm my most cynical thoughts about TV advertising.

The campaign is a crock. First, it’s patronising. It treats us as imbeciles who need help to make the choice between water and beer, and it compounds the insult by using childish language (“Beersies”) more suited to a day care centre.

It doesn’t even get the message clear, as the focus group feedback showed. Some viewers found it confusing.

But the most objectionable aspect of the campaign is that it pretends complex social issues can be addressed through quirky TV commercials. The underlying premise is lazy, deceitful and simplistic.

Government agencies like the HPA must be God’s gift to the advertising business. They have lots of money to throw around on social engineering projects, they are highly susceptible to advertising agency bullshit, and they obligingly don’t insist that the ads produce measurable results.

That leaves the agencies free to do what they most like doing – making commercials designed to impress other agencies and to win prizes at industry awards ceremonies, of which there seems to be least one every month.

It’s a lethal combination, then – a taxpayer-funded bunch of do-gooders on a mission to make us all better people, and an advertising agency eager to use the our money to make ads that don’t achieve anything.

 

A small country with a big inferiority complex

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, June 22.)

ONE OF our least attractive national characteristics was on display last week. I refer to our puerile tendency to poke our tongues out and go nyah-nyah at the Australians whenever we're perceived to have bettered them.

Not content simply to relish the All Whites’ lucky 1-1 draw with Slovakia, we had to gloat at the Socceroos’ 4-0 hammering by Germany. But any side can have a bad day, particularly against a side that’s ranked sixth in the world, and it could easily be the All Whites’ turn to stumble next. Schadenfreude – the enjoyment of others’ misfortunes – has a nasty habit of rebounding.

In any case, what was the point of crowing at Australia’s failure? All it did was announce to the world that we’re a small-minded country with a big inferiority complex.

We even failed to see the ironic humour in the Sydney Morning Herald’s headline: Australasia 1, Slovakia 1. Predictably, we rose to the bait and took it as a slight.

Sporting rivalry between New Zealand and Australia has always been intense but it used to be essentially good-natured. I’m not sure that’s true anymore.

A sour, petty tone is creeping into the relationship, though only on our side of the ditch. Surveys show that Australians still regard New Zealand and New Zealanders with more affection than any other country, which is probably more than we deserve. We should hope it stays that way, because we need them more than they need us.

Rivalry when we’re competing against each other is one thing, but in international competitions like the World Cup we can surely afford to be more big-hearted. In fact we should probably celebrate Australian successes as the next best thing to our own.

* * *

ONE OF last year’s more bizarre moments came when Dr Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organisation, announced the start of the swine flu pandemic. She made it sound as if she was opening the Olympic Games or announcing the winner of the best picture award at the Oscars.

“The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic,” she proudly declared. I waited for her to add “Gentlemen, start your engines” and sound a hooter.

So far this year, concern over swine flu has been noticeably muted. In fact people are now wondering whether last year’s hysteria was a huge over-reaction, largely orchestrated by big drug companies that stood to make billions from the sale of vaccines.

The British Medical Journal has been severely critical of the WHO, accusing it of being less than transparent in taking advice from experts employed by the drug companies.

On Morning Report last week, director of public health Mark Jacobs told Sean Plunket that about 35 people in New Zealand had died of swine flu. And how many could be expected to die in a typical year from normal seasonal influenza? “Probably 200.”

Notwithstanding all the above, I got a flu vaccine this year because my GP recommended it, and he’s a sensible bloke. But the WHO’s credibility has taken a hammering, which is gratifying because this is the same organisation that drives the global phobia over alcohol consumption.

* * *

THIS column recently noted the emergence of a psychological affliction called Acute Sensitivity Disorder, the main symptom of which is readiness to take offence.

The rapid spread of this condition is apparent from the annual report of the Advertising Standards Authority, which contains a list of the most complained-about ads of 2009.

No 1 on the list was a Hell’s Pizza ad which played on a widely reported incident in which a Tongan man barbecued a dog in his back yard. No surprises there, since Hell’s Pizza and its advertising agency go all out to provoke controversy with ads that push the boundaries and were probably thrilled that this one attracted 62 complaints (which were upheld).

But the ad that most interested me was the one that ranked No 2. This was a Stihl chainsaw television ad in which a dying man, with his weeping family clustered around his bed, feebly whispers in his son’s ear: “Look after your mother”.

After the old man draws his last breath and expires, another family member asks the son what his last message was. The son, barely able to conceal his delight, replies: “He said I can have his chainsaw.”

Fifty-two people complained. Some said the ad was in bad taste, lacked sensitivity and was disrespectful of death. Others said it promoted lying for material gain and undermined family values.

Good grief. Whatever happened to our sense of humour? I’m phobic about television advertising, but if there were more ads like this I might stop reaching for the mute button.

To its credit, the Advertising Standards Complaints Board didn’t uphold the complaints. It ruled that the “darkly humorous and satirical presentation of a deathbed wish” saved the ad from crossing the threshold of offensiveness.