The Revolution as an Ad Campaign

The big Egyptian advertising agency JWT is becoming something of a laughingstock for a commercial that seems to imply that an advertising campaign for the big Vodaphone Egypt telecom company ("The power is in your hands") helped inspire the revolution against Husni Mubarak.  The uproar is discussed in English here. I understand that with all the backlash, JWT is trying to make the ad go down the memory hole, but here's a YouTube version with English subtitles that still works as I post this, though if it doesn't when you get here I won't be surprised. [UPDATE: It's down the memory hole, too.]



Admittedly, they do say, "We didn't start the revolution."


But Vodafone, like all the other Internet providers, did shut down the Internet (on orders from the Mubarak government) in order to try to stop it, as some commentators have noted.

Ah, the ad biz.