Daredevil Carves Pavement with Skis in the Name of ... Audi.

Adgabber's Elyse drew our attention to this fresh online ad for Audi, which features an extreme skier doing crazy shit all over San Francisco -- a city known for its treacherously steep hills, railed streets, and slow-moving, trolley-shaped obstacles. Oh -- and lack of snow.

The German ad is a promotion for Audi's quattro Gefuhl. We don't know how or why, but there you have it. Fun work by Kemper Trautmann.

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Pro-Skaters Call Foul on BBDO Content Rip

From the Adrants mailbag:

My skater friends have been sending me a link all day long that shows a blatant - and I mean blatant - BBDO rip off of a [Spike Jonze] directed skateboard video [...]. The original was from the most popular skate video in years, but obviously, someone's creative director hadn't seen it:

o Original, and far superior.

o The fraud.

The only way that is legit, would be if Spike did it himself... but quality-wise, it just doesn't stand up.

The ad labeled "the fraud" was put together by BBDO Mexico for Snickers, oddly enough. Pro-skaters Steve Berra and Eric Koston are so pissed about the Spike Jonze rip-off that they posted it on their blog and are trying to drum up some righteous rage.

More on this over at Agency Spy, which has a translation for the Mexican Snickers spot as well as comment from Berra.

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Army of Flight Attendants Tout Utility Company Benefits

So...what do you do if you are a boring electric utility no one really cares about yet, for some reason, you still need to spend money on marketing? You go hire an army of women dressed like flight attendants and choreograph them Chinese Olympic Closing Ceremony-style in industrial situations which, somehow, is supposed to explain how great the utility is.

Oh, and before we forget, the utility in question is Holland's RWE and the agency behind the work is Amsterdam agency THEY.

Animals Get Weird, Pretty PA Wanted, Zugara Twits, Mullen Tweets

- Like animals? Like strange "viral" videos? Jonesing for anything Samsung? Then check out this seeded video from The Viral Factory.

- The 12th annual One Show Interactive Awards will take place on May 8th at Terminal 5 in New York as part of The One Club's Festival Week which includes The One Show on May 6 at Jazz at Lincoln Center and One Show Design on May 4 at the IAC Building in New York.

- Creative director seeks hot personal assistant on Craigslist.

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Cisco Explains Mobile Internet to Common Man

Okay. See the hands at left grasping greedily for the giant diamond? That's supposed to represent the mobile web ... and the faceless villains that will immediately try to exploit it.

This is the first of a three-part video series that explains the whole "4G=IP" thing to people that buy tech items, such as iPods, primarily because they like the pretty colours.

We're suckers for smooth animated magic -- and for Cisco in general -- so we kept our eyes on the piece, which was a comfortable length and not too stuffed with strange-sounding geek noises. It's possible we even learned things.

That squeaky Adventures in Odyssey-sounding narrator kinda pissed us off though.

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Scion Whips Out Fresh Sample for xD

Here's "Samples xD," the latest spot from Scion's fresh-out "Samples" effort. The latter launched in January and features car customizations mashed-up to the din of mixed beats.

From ATTIK CD Simon Needham: "These newest ads energetically combine actual owners' xBs, xDs and tCs with stock models in ways that convey the distinct personalities of Scion's vehicles and their owners - while also showing how their individuality ties them together."

Metaphor for life if we ever heard one. Sound design -- a mere window-shopper to Aphex Twin's Window Licker -- by Face the Music.

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NBA's Al Harrington Offers Up Animation For Kmart Kicks

From George Parker's favorite agency, Draft/FCB, comes this recent commercial for Kmart which hypes the Al Harrington-designed $34.99 Protege sneaker. Working with Draft/FCB, production company Superfad did some live action and animation work that was designed to be "an authentic representation of their [the shoes] origin."

In the spot, we have Harrington shooting hoops. He then talks directly to the camera while holding out his hand on which several animations depicting the shoes origin, its price point, its features and its performance characteristics. dance about.

Old Spice Cures Tony Stewart's Escalator Phobia

In this cockle-warming story about a hyperventilating geek who now wears onesies and gets his pick of trophies (both metal and collagen-enhanced), Tony Stewart reinforces the power of Swagger.* The Old Spice product previously de-geeked Brian Urlacher and LL Cool J.

Actually, LL Cool J's still pretty square. Sometimes getting all muscly to stop being square will only make you squarer.

But we digress. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the Swagger campaign. It's starting to feel a little less highlariously kitsch-tacular and more like Axe/Lynx. Which sucks because once upon a time, both brands were uniquely neat, and now they're almost exactly alike, except Old Spice is too red and Axe/Lynx is too potent.

Work by Wieden + Kennedy/Portland -- which succeeded, as always, in stimulating provocative discussion on YouTube.

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Baseball Classic Takes its Message to the Global Village

There's something about watching people represent their countries in some sporting cause that makes you thirst to be represented yourself. That's the card ESPN plays in "My Team," a global marketing effort for the '09 World Baseball Classic ("March 5th to the 23rd!").

Famous faces in the ad, representing in their own tongues and everything, include Jorge Cantu, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Ichiro Suzuki. We felt the compulsion to wave a flag, or at least one of those giant signs shaped like an index finger, and we don't even like baseball.

Produced by ESPN and agency DCode. The spot falls under the catchy slogan "National pastime. International stars," which went live on February 14. English/Spanish print, online, radio and outdoor executions will roll out after February 23.

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Is That An Animation Biting My Ass?

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco is out with another Sprint NASCAR commercial and, thankfully, there are no short shorts in the one. This one's called Speedway and it hypes the NASCAR Sprint Series and the ability to watch it on your Sprint phone.

Having just caught Tom Cruise's Days of Thunder on cable recenlty, we can identify with the on-track mania depicted in this commercial. Though we're not entirely clear why Goodby decided to get MassMarket to visual effectify the spot into something resembling a video game. Oh alright, we'll agree it's far more interesting that just watching "regular" cars crash into each other and it does capture the take-no-prisoners competitive aspect of the sport.