"Obay" Bus Ads in Canada

Viral marketing? Disturbingly real new product?

I don't know, but these "Obay" bus advertisements seem to be popping up all over Canada, I'm not sure if they are in the US or not. They are both on bus stops all over Canadian citiers, and also inside of busses on traditional overhead advertisements. Along with this one shown below, there is also one that says "When Amy started to think for herself, we had to nip it in the bud with Obay." And something below like "From the maker's of You'llBelieveWhatWeTellYou.Ca (Not the actual link, I don't recall it offhand... I will look tomorrow and see if it's real.)" A quick Google search finds not much of anything, except other people from other Canadian cities that are equally perplexed. Oh, and an EBay ripoff. Perhaps the strangest thing is that it actually does have a TM symbol above the trade names... which I didn't think you could do unless it actually was a registered trademark.

See for yourself:

Might just be an ad company trying to drum up business.

A few years back in Toronto there were bus ads for men`s lipstick - saw them all over the place for a couple of months. Turned out to be an ad company showing off it`s skills to get business.

Thats pretty strange, I hope they don't start having adds everywhere like this...

It might have something to do with this guy...
(yeah its ebaumsworld.. fox news video)
Although it doesn't really look like the same style adds and theres not even a website.

I would imagine it could have an effect on us if we read 'obay' 'be a good boy' and soo on everywhere we looked.. I thought it would be a but more disguised though.

Yes!!

They're in Montreal too!

I saw it the other day and wondered what kind of Orwellian Jedi Mind Tricks were being played on me.

Disturbing to say the least.

My guess is it's some kind of viral marketing campaign to create buzz for a new socially conscious organization who will reveal their point soon.

At least I hope so...
.

P.S. using the TM like that usually means that the trademark user is claiming what is known as Common Law Rights under the concepts of use and making known of a mark. A company will also use this when the trademark has been applied for but has yet to be granted (i.e. the registration is pending at CIPO). When registration is achieved they can use the circled R that is found on so many products or even a circled TM.
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[edit on 2/14/2008 by Gools]

www.obay.net...

(CLICK IT) It makes perfect sense for it to be these guys.

I'm guessing it's these guys because the ebay ripoff (oBay) actually reroutes through ebay itself it seemed.

[edit on 14-2-2008 by beaverg]

Life grows stranger every day.


' My son used to have his own hopes & aspirations but now he has mine' .... !!! ???

'Thanks Obay ' ???

Thanks for what ? For turning my son into my property .. my clone ?
For ridding my son of his independence of mind ? For granting me 'control' of my child who I fail to recognise (or am unwilling to recognise) as an individual who may have different hopes and aspirations to mine ?

Is this a joke ?

Is it aimed specifically at Asians (Asians feature in the OP photo) ?

If so .. why ? Is it because it's believed by some that Asians are often more than ordinarily ambitious for their children?

Is the ad pandering to a 'children are property' mentality ?

In the other Obay ads, are Asians featured ?

Will return to this thread, as interested to learn more about this.

They look good.

My 3 year old is a complete PITA... They might sort him right out!

I'm interested to see where they are going with this, but I guess that's the point... Doh!

MonKey

More:



Some very good sleuthing by people on another website including a mysterious web address and a phone number with a strange recording!!

External Website

I've been looking around the net and found a few suspicious things.

www.obay.ca , pretty much a blank site. One of the pre-links is www.becauseIsaidso.com which has a link to a page called "Amy's Page". Why is this relevant? Amy is the name of a kid mentioned in one of the ads "When my Amy started having thoughts of her own I nipped it in the bud with Obay!"

Finally, we had a radio ad today which gave a number. 1-888-YOU-OBAY

Here's a transcript of what's said on the recording if anyone's interested.

Quote:
"....Calling 1-888-YOU-OBAY. There's nothing worse than a child who won't do what they're told. You raise them, feed them, cloth them, sit through their violin recitals; and how do they pay you back?? They go ahead and think for themselves!

It's not right and it's not what you had in mind... Thankfully there's OBay! A new remedy from the makers of "why?BecauseIsaidso!" And "NotUnderMyRoof!"

Is your child ignoring your subtle suggestions? Are they not getting the hint when you tell them what to do!? It's time for OBay; Are they making important life decisions without listening to your valuable irriputable input!? Hello OBay! OBay works where other parental controls, like shouting, don't. Just one dose and you'll see a difference... Your truculant teenagers will be transformed into dosile pussycats, open to your thoughts, your ideas and most importantly the future you've mapped out for them.

So order your supply of OBay today... Because YOUR Wish is YOUR command!"

Whatever they are up to... it's working.

They've got people's attention and better not waste that precious "commodity".
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[edit on 2/14/2008 by Gools]

Obay Auction and Obay pills not related according to this story.

My money's on this being some sort of promotion for anything but medication. Here's the website of the advertising company.

Astral Media

Good find, OP!

My guess is this is part of the whole recent creepy Big Brother Child Empowerment Agenda. I've been watching the television lately just to see what's going on, and after a few days of watching it objectively, I felt kind of sick. I don't know why 'they' are after families, but all the shows lately seem to portray the men as ignorant or arrogant, the women as freewheelin, power weilding, and sexually liberated. The teen aged material is all about doing what you want to dispite your parents or shows like jackass, and the kids are watching shows like fairy odd parents.
Laws are being passed to ban spanking, corporal punishment in schools is gone, parents are being told by professional liscensed counselors to 'ignore bad behavior', kids can hire student advocates to represent them against teachers and principles, channel 1 is constantly pumping them full of crap here on a daily basis. My son says the television in the classrooms all cut on automatically now when the daily feed begins.
Lots of creepy things going on in public education lately. But then it always was a creepy institution from the beginning. If the State's going to start raising my kids for me, then they're gonna start buying the food and diapers too.

Wow, its funny on so many levels.A dig at big pharma for sure, as well as a great spoof ad. lol!

To me this looks like some kind of spoof ad like Adbusters does, so I googled "Obay + adbusters" and found a blog entry by the creator of obay.info, Pete Ippel.

He denies responsibility for the ad campaign, and he believes (like me) that it is some kind of spoof ad campaign. He writes:

I interpret the bus stop poster “culture jam” presently in Canada as a parody ad campaign which critiques adults and calls for more active parenting. By using a pun, Obay and it’s relationship to obey a direct command, the group responsible wishes to show how drugs are no substitution for “present” adults responsible for child rearing.

[snip]

The ad seems to be in response to the drugging of youth and the increase in diagnosis of ADHD. Regarding who would fund such a campaign, I look to the ongoing war between the Church of Scientology and Psychiatry professionals, and will be interested to note who funded the campaign.

He also explains the purpose for creating obay.info:

Commodiphilia, diagnosed as assigning value to valueless objects in the off chance that it may be worth something to another disparate individual, is an artist coined term that references both the commodity, and the sexual perversion of pedophilia. Obay.info critiques the mega-consumerist culture that surrounds Ebay, and is both a visual pun and a cautionary piece that succeeds when the user questions why they are so involved with buying and selling of the most mundane possessions.

hypermodern.net...

Also notice that he has noticed the hits coming from ATS and Yahoo answers.

Originally posted by Yarcofin
Oh, and an EBay ripoff. Perhaps the strangest thing is that it actually does have a TM symbol above the trade names... which I didn't think you could do unless it actually was a registered trademark.

Being a parody, it's probably allowed under fair use.

You can see some spoof ads that take advantage of the fair use doctrine here:
adbusters.org...

Also notice that obay.info doesn't actually sell anything, so there's no way someone could mistake it for ebay.

EDIT: SORRY Sanity Lost, I posted content from the same page you had already posted above.... mea culpa


[edit on 15/2/08 by ConspiracyNut23]

Haven't seen any of the adds in my neck of the woods yet, but personally I think there awesome.

In a funny kind of way.

They are so 'off the mark', they are on the mark.

I'd buy whatever they are selling, lol.

There is no doubt an underlying message in the adds, but on the surface I find them hilarious.

I was out and about in the city early this morning and keeping a lookout for these ads. I noted at least four bus stops on my walk and didn't see them.

I know for sure I saw this add somewhere because I stopped dead in my tracks and thought "what the hell?"

Then again, I was in Kingston a few weeks ago so that might be where I saw the ad.

Anyways, the reason I'm doubting myself now is that I'm pretty sure I saw it in English (not unheard of in Montreal but there's that whole language law 101 thing to consider here) and secondly, this author claims it's an Ontario Colleges Ad Campaign:

The Ones That Mother Gives You

...we were able to track down the origin of deVilla's source and confirm (with reasonable confidence on our part) that the responsible parties are "Ontario Colleges [which] had put together their money to run an ad campaign." This may or may not be cryptically corroborated by some cached text on Google exclaiming, "I saw this on the bus yesterday. It’s the first part of a two part ad for some Ontario college thing. If I see the second half, I’ll take a picture of it and upload. Enjoy. Obay!" Those sentences no longer appear on sam.cw.leung, which either means Sam was mistaken or revealed something he shouldn't have.

Now, I've seen blog entries and comments on different sites about these things being spotted in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal (myself, with some doubt now) and even someone claiming to have seen one in New York City.

Granted that Ontario colleges may be wanting to attract students from all over Canada and maybe even major US cities but that kind of expense seems a bit much, even if several colleges pool their money together.

As of this writing, I don't think anything certain can be said for who is behind the ads. If it is the colleges, kudos to them for creating a buzz in the general population. When is the last time you remember a University making it's presence felt in the wider community? Other than your senior high school year?

Oh... and thanks to the Torontoist article for referencing abovetopsecret.
.

Haven't seen any where I am, and if it's that much of an ad that it's posted everywhere in Canada...I'd think it would be here, but nothing at all.

Andre The Giant Has A Posse.

en.wikipedia.org...

ConspiracyNut23

EDIT: SORRY Sanity Lost, I posted content from the same page you had already posted above.... mea culpa

Thou art forgiven my friend...

The Obey campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. The first aim of Phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment. The Obey campaign attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with Obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer's perception and attention to detail.

The medium is the message.

The Obey Campaign

Obey Giant - WORLDWIDE PROPAGANDA DELIVERY

I also saw one of the bus ads today in Peterborough, Ontario and I highly doubt that this "OBAY" campaign is the same as Shepard Fairey's "OBEY".
First off, the spelling is different, and Fairey would not hide behind a different name/spelling, esp. when he is well known/linked to his work and his work is featured all over the world (on google video check out "Shepard Fairey, ICONS" there are two or three parts).
Also, the art is completely different! Fairey stylizes his work like war propaganda posters and it would not make sense for these bus ads to take on a different form all together (how they have a modernized style). Also, the idea of the pill bottle makes is seem like "obay" is focusing on the health care industry (just to broaden the topic area of interest) while Fairey attacks advertisements/politics in general. I'm pretty sure its someone just bootlegging his idea/name, with some variations, to say a similar message.

I also just found this:
torontoist.com...