[URBAN NOTE] Obay

[rfmcdonald]

An Obay sign in Toronto..
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I noticed this advertisement last weekend, but Torontoist says that this campaign, comprising a series of fake pharmaceutical ads on the theme of the advertisement opposite has been going on for a while. I'd wondered for a bit whether this was a Church of Scientology initiative, but then I realized it was too imaginative for them. In a more recent posting, Torontoist has made a definitive statement about the campaign's origin.

[W]e traced them, with no small amount of confidence, to a substantially less dramatic source––Colleges Ontario, an advocacy organization representing twenty-four colleges across the province. The organization would neither confirm nor deny their involvement to either Torontoist or, several days later, The Star, but still told us all to wait a few weeks for...something. As far as mysterious ad campaigns go, this one was almost perfect: only breadcrumbs to trace back to the source, a city left to talk about the ad and its message and what it all meant (which, of course, was precisely the point).

But it's finally official: Rob Savage, Colleges Ontario's Director of Communications, called Torontoist moments ago to confirm that Colleges Ontario is indeed behind the ads, and the organization just sent out a press release with information about a media launch event next Monday that promises to reveal "the news behind Obay and its side effects on Ontario’s Post-secondary Education." Torontoist will be there.