Truth in Advertising

As I was reading today's New York Times Circuits section and flipped to its back page, I nearly choked on my chocolate chip muffin when I saw an ad for the Samsung BlackJack. The ad features a pretty model, the bold text reads, rachel2, and its tagline is, "your style to a higher power. the slimmer, smarter Samsung BlackJack." (NB: apparently capitalizing the first letter in a sentence is for those of us with lower powers.) The Rachel in the ad is actually Rachel Zoe, the Hollywood stylist most famous for transforming Nicole Richie from a zaftig sidekick into that fabulous-bag-of-bones we've come to admire. In other words, Zoe is the one responsible for turning Nicole into a dangerously anorexic sliver of her former self. So that's a big bravo to Samsung for choosing a diet nazi to serve as the face of their slenderized product line. It's genius: they're literally calling it as we see it.

But what makes this Samsung ad so deliciously devious in addition to its liberal use of photoshopping? (The image it features of Zoe transforms her into a healthy Cheryl Tiegs-type when this is what she really looks like:)


The best part is the copy, which sounds more an ad for those pro-ana groups than for a souped-up telephone. Here it is:

What do you do when you style some of the most demanding A-list celebrities in Hollywood? Clone yourself. Or, if you're like Rachel Zoe, you use the new silm Samsung BlackJack smart device... Its ultra-slim profile with a large colorful display allows you to easily manage documens, email and text from anywhere. And you'll look good doing it.

Ultra-slims clones, eh? Well if that doesn't say what's in demand in Hollywood, I don't know what does!