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The Economist, the smartest magazine in the world, may not be the smartest magazine in the world any more. Oh, the articles are just fine (we assume. We haven't read it since that free trial subscription ran out). We're basing our judgment on the magazine's new ad campaign. Which is utterly baffling. What, exactly, is the message here? Is the clown-and-stuffed-animal motif too clever for me to comprehend? Quite possible, but the campaign still reeks of a weeded college student breaking into the ad agency one night and replacing the real ads with these. Disturbing. Two full-sized pics of the inexplicable things [via Copyranter], below.

This image was lost some time after publication.
This image was lost some time after publication.

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