Hoover Vacuums Up 'Unsightly' Hip Hop

Our friend Bucky Turco, wrigin over at Complex, points us to a recent Hoover radio commercial in which promises to rid the world of dirty, unannoying unsightly.....um...hip hop? Yes, the vacuum manufacturer thinks, as James Bond did of the Beatles in one of his early flicks, the world should clean itself up and it's promising to do it's part. Check the spot out here (ignore the video ad and just click "download")

Forget Girls, Penguins Go Wild For DVD Promotion

What do Bob Saget, Penguins and Girls Gone Wild have in common? A viral-intended promotion for the DVD release of his movie The Farce of the Penguins of course. Narrated by mother f'ing, Snakes on a Plane dude Samuel L. Jackson, no less. It's dumb. It's stupid. It's funny. It was created by Special Ops Media.

Lingerie Model Gets Digitally Humped

We just have to wonder what sort of guy could be so hard up for sex, he'd have to resort to manipulation by billboard to achieve pleasurable release. Oh wait. He's part of the ad and we're talking about digital manipulation here. Funny. Ha ha. Oh wait. Digital manipulation? That's still funny.

Mutilated Barbies for the Girl Who Has Everything

This doll with missing limbs literally blows Trailer Trash Barbie out of the running. BBDO is behind this attempt to get Singaporean consumers to pay more attention to the plight of Cambodia, which happens to be deluged with landmines.

"It's often joked that shopping is both the national sport and the national pastime [of Singapore]," ECD Farrokh Madon explains to AdCritic. "Parents looking for dolls for their baby girls were greeted with a chilling reminder of what life is like for Cambodian children."

The campaign includes a direct mail component in which company execs with children receive the doll (and others like it) at the office "since parents are the most vulnerable when it comes to kids," adds Madon. This is so they'll talk to other office folk about the grotesque gift.

The back of the box "tells the sad tale of a Cambodian Princess who loses a leg on the day of the Cambodian New Year," ultimately directing shoppers to Surprising Cambodia.

We can't help but wonder how Cambodian kids would feel receiving one of these for the holidays, and learning this is how they're being hawked in nearby countries. That would definitely give me hope for the future. Wouldn't it do the same for you?

Chunky Pam Lays Heavy Ass Down on Rap

Here's another example of what MySpace has done to - er, for - society. Chunky Pam leaks her holiday wares and reps for a chunkier, more grimacy kind of female.

Please believe we grimaced back. And all this pink does a chafe-job on our eyes. But the song is amusing and with crunk and hyphy on the scene, rap just begs for parody.

UPDATE> Here's the video.

Poor Honda Asimo Can't Catch A Break

Honda just can't seem to get past that woeful day when it Asimo robot fell down the stairs during one of it's debuts. Not to be deterred by that mishap, Honda, with help from Wieden + Kennedy, released this past weekend a new Asimo commercial with not one, but several stairs which the robot succesfully ascended. Of course, in true fashion., the commercial has already been spoofed with an intercut footage of that early woeful day.

Iron Creative Snowman is Douchey, Gets Chicks

Remember the creative department douchebag? This is him, cooler.

Iron Creative throws together the ultimate douchey holiday card personality, a sequel to last year's snowman story. Yeah, it's another holiday card. Yeah, we're as sick of them as you are. And yeah, we're going to keep throwing them up here since creatives seem to love making them.

In Iron Creative's defense, it is amusing to think of a snowman as the next big VC. Or covered in the limbs of writhing hot cartoon women. He's ice cold, baby. Ice cold.

Frangelico Gets Sticky, Sexy, Somewhat Uncomfortable

Here's one for the whole family. Frangelico shows us just how creamy it gets with an image of - is that a hazelnut? - inside a mouth dripping sticky syrup.

We tilt our heads. We stare thoughtfully. And we think, if the liqueur itself were that sticky, we'd have a helluva time trying to swallow. It recalls those "Got Milk?" ads involving the dog trying futilely to get the peanut butter out of its mouth.

Image courtesy of chanukbair.

Not All Gen Y Women's Gadgets Are Cameras, Phones And MP3 Players

As it's well known research data can be massaged to come to any desired conclusion, we were pleased to see The Silly Girl's take on a recent eMarketer study that found Gen Y women love their electronic gadgets such as cameras, phones, video games and MP players. While eMarketer chose the family-friendly interpretation of the data, The Silly Girl came to an entirely different and not unlikely true conclusion regarding the 26 percent of women who used electronic gadgetry in the "none of the above" category. Gee, we wonder what sort of electronic gadget those 26 percent of women are using? The Silly Girl has the answer.

HSBC Makes Good with Ambiguous Tat Ad

This HSBC ad out of Singapore demonstrates what may be a successful attempt to re-brand a stodgy, almost rotary old player into something more contemporary. An interesting choice, though it begs the question which, between "traditional" and "trendy," is actually the positive and the negative. Smart not to paint either option in a bad light. A hat tip to the old boys - at least they know a message is only as good as its interpretation.

Self-Serving 'Proposal Gone Wrong' Still Amusing

Ross Simons Jewelers has launched another version of its long-running marriage proposal faux paux (did we spell that right?) promotion. Back in the day, videos of marriage proposals gone wrong (or right) were physically shipped to the brand and only a few people (the judges) got to see hundreds of versions of that awkward moment in life known as the marriage proposal. Now we have YouTube for public humiliation the world over. In a promotion called Proposal Gone Wrong, Ross Simons is offering $10,000 to the person who submits the best marriage proposal screw up.

Oddly enough, the promotion is entirely self-serving (not that all marketing isn't) in that the $10,000 doesn't come in the form of cash but in store credit. It might have been nice if that $10,000 was around before the engagement ring was actually purchased. Now, the $10,000 has to be spent on other body bling whether you want it or not. Oh wait, people love jewelery. Who are we kidding?

Oral History Revived by New Orleans Ad Agency

In Lives Connected, 44 Peter A Mayer employees revisit their Katrina experiences. Far from the usual give-us-money pitch, the courage-tales nod to a tradition of legacy storytelling prevalent in New Orleans, with recurring themes weaving through each piece. The site launched around the same time hurricane season bowed out.

The NOLA-based agency calls this an "interactive data visualization" - a busy buzzword for "oral history" that we probably could have done without. But Mayer's shtick happens to be civic pride. Its slogan is, blatantly, "We wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

"[The purpose of Lives Connected] is to highlight the resilient nature of the agency and the spirit and dedication of its employees," explains a representative.

We're pretty sure somebody's going to shit all over this and claim it's an exploitation of high emotions and turbulent events. That's cool. But we liked the gesture and there's room in the Katrina narrative for more than just body counts and weepy stories. Those don't really help anybody or bring business back to the community. So nice job, guys.

XM Goes Yule with Post-Mod Holiday Cards

With the help of Lowe New York, XM Radio puts together a holiday card generator that's snazzier than your average. Shucking the white snow and holiday colours that one both expects and dismisses in holiday card campaigns, cards remain a sparing white-on-black with yellow flourishes. The nav is also stark and sparing.

We thought it was a neat concept - a few equal-opportunity greetings, a streamlined appearance, clever music, twitchy animals. We doff our caps to XM and Lowe for turning a stock campaign into something engaging without embarrassing themselves or indulging in overkill. That's surprisingly hard to do.

Some Feel DDB Berlin Copied Idea For VW Frog Ad, Want Apology

Some time ago, Danish comedians Wulffmorgenthaler created a comic strip that showed a frog being carried away by a fly stuck to his tongue. Earlier this year, DDB Berlin let loose a Volkswagen commercial that showed yes, frog being carried away by a fly stuck to his tongue. The usual pissing match has ensued. Some think DDB should apologize. See the strip here. Watch the ad here. What do you think?

Kenwood Unleashes Swedish Bimbo Boobs For MP3 Player

It's a good thing Annika holds the Kenwood MP3 player up to the camera for a close up in this video otherwise we'd have suffered from the "my eyes are up here" syndrome throughout the entire thing in which she sings We Wish You A Merry Christmas in an enticingly sexy Swedish accent. Acknowledging her hard to miss cleavage, this rendition of "We" Wish You A Merry Christmas takes on entirely new meaning.

Channel One Troubled, Evolution Spoofed, PayPerPost Discloses

- As AdFreak points out, Chysler may want to revise the ad it has placed introducing the Time PErson of the Year. The ad's headline reads, "You might not be the Time Person of the Year." Oops.

- The controversial PayPerPost, a service that pays bloggers to write things about brands now requires those bloggers to make not of that on their blogs. Since the disclosure is not on a per post basis, this simply calls into question the merits of every single word ever mentioned on the blog.

- Esquire gives a nod to the 2003 Pop Montreal Festival poster with its current cover featuring George Clooney.

- Looks like Channel One, the company that pretends to educate kids but is all about delivering ads to them, is in trouble. Complaints have increased. Revenue is down. Regulation looms. A sale is possible.

- Yet another spoof of Dove's Evolution.

- Greenpeace continued its efforts at calling the public's attention to Apple's apparent less-than-green approach to manufacturing its computers by shining green lights on the the company's 5th Avenue store in New York City last Thursday night.