CP+P (once Crispin Porter, later Crispin Porter and Bogusky, then CP+B with a PLUS sign just to annoy anyone who wants to use an old school boolean search where + = and, but I digress....) managed to offend a whole bunch of people in Canada with this ad. It aired everywhere except in Quebec, and soon was retracted while Bic Canada humbly apologized for the ad. In the ad were see a prison somewhere in Asia, presumably a country with a horrific human rights record like Burma or China. The prisoners await their judgment from an official who is armed only with a "condemned" stamp and a pen for pardoning. He attempts to pardon a man, but has run out of ink. Meanwhile the officials lady-friend is dressed up for a date gets impatient and hurries him along, so he simply uses the condemned stamp instead. Get a pen you can count on. is the message.

“Want things to go smoothly? Get a Bic pen with Easy-Glide ink.”

Oh, yes. The ad uses the death penalty, a lady in waiting an some sort of dictator as a punchline for cheap pens, which many may see as extremely tasteless humor. Tim Godsall does a great job in directing the ad though.