The earliest known advertisement is a 3,000-5,000-year-old scrap of papyrus from Thebes, Egypt offering a reward for a runaway slave named Shem. Ads remained fairly straightforward throughout the millennia up until their Cambrian explosion in the 20th century, generated by groundbreaking communication technology and an industry established to sell people products with it. Though their field enjoyed a brief period of artfulness—or so I’ve allowed Mad Men to convince me—the care and craft ad men and women once put into their pitches is long gone. Audience attention spans and commercial lengths are the shortest they’ve ever been, so some Madison Avenue suits are now resorting to the tactics discovered and perfected by the news and social media organizations: capturing your attention through visceral repulsion.

Or so that would appear to be the case with car insurance giant Liberty Mutual’s controversial new mascot. He’s a spherical ball of yellow fur named Liberty Biberty and people fucking hate him.…