Pamela Anderson to Convince China Not to Wear Fur

In a new PETA campaign in collaboration with China Telecom, Pamela Anderson will appear on 70,000 promotional cards wearing nothing but posing in a way that properly conceals certain body parts. The effort is to convince China, which has no law against raising and killing animals for fur that wearing fur is a bad thing. With something like 1.3 billion Chinese citizens, we don't give this campaign much chance of success.

Marilyn Manson Joins Celebu-fragrance Freak Show

Joining the parade of fanatical, fragrance-fixated celebrities and making the MTV show, "Sweet Smell of the Stars" ever closer to becoming reality, freak rocker Marilyn Manson has decided to launch his ow fragrance. We can't quite imagine what it will smell like but even sweet sixteen cum trailer trash Britney Spears' fragrance must smell better than this concoction. Manson isn't stopping with just a fragrance line. He's going to roll out a full on beauty line.

Publisher Hosts 'Blook' Prize, Neglects to Mention Originators

Online publisher Lulu has announced the Lulu Blooker prize, awarded in three categories, to the person who submits the best "blook," a book based on the contents of a weblog. The contest, which offers a $2,000 brand prize, will be judged by big-time blogger Cory Doctrow, Slashdot's Robin Miller and ibiblio's Paul Jones. Unfortunately, while latching on to the term "blook" as if they owned it, Lulu neglected to mention either Jeff Jarvis, who coined the term, or Tony Pierce, who wrote the first blook which is just typical of entities cashing in on culturati, trends and memes.

Maxim Living Helps Men Impress Women

Hoping to teach every guy how to turn his living space into a swanky love nest, Maxim has launched its Maxim Living microsite on which furniture and other lad-pad elements are featured. A house ad, created by Della Femina is currently running in the October issue of Maxim. Guys, check it out to improve your chances with the ladies. Ladies, check it out to see the lengths men will go to get into your..uh...show you a good time.

Lottery Ad Capitalizes On Stupid, Greedy Americans

Here's an ad for the Washington state lottery in which a woman freaks out to a 911 operator for reasons other than one would initially think. As Adrants reader Sean Orr points out, this spot does a great job illustrating America's hyper-capitalist, greedy obsession with money no matter what the cost. Oh sure, it's humor but what's humor without a reality on which to base it?

Flight Attendants Promote Travel Website on Street

For the launch of Itravel Footwear's new travel site, J3tLag, flight attendant-clad models roamed the streets of New York handing out promotional material for the site. The site is authored by contributors such as CoolHunting's Josh Rubin, Flavorpill, "travel and play companion" Jet Set Lara, Fodder's John Rambow, Johnny Jet, and others. The site promises to be all things hip-travel. More images of the promotion here.

Contextual Advertising Fails Again

In another clear sign contextual advertising and natural disasters don't mix, a Swatch ad above a CNN lead story, yesterday, about the South Asia earthquake read, "Shake the World at," followed by the image of a watch. Oops. Did Swatch predict the time of the earthquake? There really ought to be better controls in place for this sort of thing.

Brewer Corrects Meaning of BYOB

Austin-based advertising and branding agency, McGarrah/Jessee, has developed an ad campaign for the Spoetzl Brewery's Shiner brand for the launch of the brewer's Shiner 96, a new, limited-edition, commemorative beer created to celebrate the brewery's 96th anniversary. Spoetzl is Texas' oldest independent brewery and producer of Shiner beers, named for the town where the brewery began in 1909. Shiner 96, a Marzen-style ale, is the first of the company's annual series of commemorative beers which will lead up to the brewery's centennial celebration in 2009.

In the print ad, the headline reads, "In 1909, B.Y.O.B. meant build your own brewery." The ads feature an image of the beer and its label, along with an old photo of the Shiner Brewing Association, circa 1909. Out-of-home ads stick with the headline, a Shiner logo extension, and the new beer label.

Hotel Promoted With Manhood Monitoring Restroom Models

Armed with cameras, tape measures and smirks for those who don't measure up, images of models above urinals in the New Zealand Sofitel Queenstown Hotel have made the bathroom going experience a bit more enjoyable...or less enjoyable for those standing in front of the wrong stall. Choose wisely lest your stall mates will have cause to question your manhood.

Heinz Teams With Kaboose For Silly Squirts Launch

Family site Kaboose and Heinz have teamed to promote a new children's ketchup product Silly Squirt. The agreement provides Kaboose promotional space on Silly Squirt bottle labels and provides Heinz a promotional microsite within the Kaboose site. The deal was put together by Starcom.

MINI Launches Custom Roof Graphic Site

Random Culture points to a new MINI website, Roof Studio, where visitors can upload and download roof graphics ready to be printed on vinyl for roof application. Currently, there are hundreds of designs to choose from

Advertising Highjacked by Consumers

Writing on Ad Age, Bob Garfield, in another of his occasional essays, sums up the recent growing trends of
consumer generated media, conversational marketing and what he calls The Open Source Revolution. We've covered all this over the past year or so but it's nice to see it wrapped up into a coherently powerful statement. From Orange County Teacher George Masters creation of his "Tiny Machine" iPod spot to GE's Pen campaign to Mercedes' send-us-a-picture-of-you-and-your-car campaign to Converse's consumer created films for Chuck Taylors to shifting copyright laws to the future role of agencies as enablers of conversation versus controllers of conversation to marketers need to embrace the conversation, advertising has been turned on its head. Marketers and agencies who do not acknowledge the open source nature of consumer participation in brand conversations will fail miserably.

In a BlogOn panel "Can Advertising Be Social," held October 18 at 9AM, I, along with Life After The 30-Second Spot Author Joe Jaffe, Organic CEO Mark Kingdon and AXE Brand Development Director David Rubin will discuss this very topic.