Jeep's 'New Species' Continues to Infect

Like a plague rolling across the land, the Jeep Wrangler campaign with its "new species" keeps invading more and more media space including storescapes, billboards and bug cases featuring miniature versions of the Jeep in bug form. This campaign's certainly got legs. OK, that was bad, Really bad. See more bugs here.

Disgruntled Client Videos Client-Bashing Agency

This sounds fake, looks fake, feels fake an probably is fake. Hopefully, it's not another Agency.com Subway video disaster in the making. Posted in the Adrants forum and on YouTube is a video taken, apparently, by a client's cell phone camera which shows the agency bashing the client while she was out of the room (she left her camera phone on as she left). The text of the conversation, which you can read here on a blog called The Disgruntled Client seemingly set up simply to trash this client's agency, seems contrived and fake.

Some Adrants forum members have doubted the purity of this video and the blog surmising it to be just another poor attempt by an oh-so-cool agency to promote themselves using attempts at social media wit. We've sent an inquiry to the blog's owner for clarification but have not yet received a reply. We're leaning toward fake but we'll report back any information, if any, we receive from The Disgruntled Client.

Farley Interviewed, Restaurant Video, Yahoo Humbles

- Brandweek interviewed Toyota Group VP Jim Farley, named the publication's Grand Marketer of the Year, who shared his ideas on what Toyota is dealing with from a marketing perspective and how he plans to move the car maker's marketing forward.

- Moe's Southwest Grill has hooked up with ViTrue for a make your own commercial contest which will be hosted on Sharkel and on the restaurant's site.

- "I am not satisfied with our current financial performance, and we intend to improve it," Yahoo's Terry Semel said. "We are not exploiting our considerable strengths as well as we should be, and we are committed to doing better."

- With interstitial comes ons and embedded text ads, job sites such as Monster and others are implementing ever more intrusive forms of advertising to keep their business model afloat.

- Running for governor in Texas is a kinky business.

IntelliTXT Thinks Bill Murray Hangs With Porn Stars

While it may be true that Bill Murray does, actually, hang with porn stars, we're thinking if he's good enough to hang with Scarlett Johansson, he probably doesn't need porn stars. Having said that, our favorite text-trashing text link poster child, IntelliTXT thought the "actors" Bill Murray was with when he played golf the other day might need a little help scoring their next gig and helpfully linked them to xxxpornjobs.com. (You do know that's not a work-safe link, don't you?) Don't you just love contextual advertising fuckery?

1-Click Answers Bubbles Up Info, Ads

We are no fans of in-text advertising from the likes of IntelliTXT and others but this new offering from Microsoft and Answers.com, 1-Click Answers, is user initiated and offers more than just advertising. With 1-Click Answers, which is a recommended add-on in Microsoft's IE7, people who Alt-click on any word will be presented an "AnswerTip" information bubble providing relevant information relating to the selected word or phrase. Clicking a "more" button in the bubble will take the person to the Answers.com site. 1-Click's advertising angle is the presentation of contextual text ads, currently provided by Google, at the bottom of the bubble. Broadening the use of the application - and reach for advertisers - 1-Click Answers will also work within any text-based desktop application. We probably wouldn't use it but we don't hate it.

Ms. Dewey Sexes Up Search

In one swift blow Ms. Dewey has effectively done away with the stodgy librarian and that other search engine persona that we could never see ourselves warming up to by a fire.

She's saucy, she's sexy, she even poses provocatively from time to time with a cute little notepad - but beware, like most hot chicks she is chatty as hell and gets a little needy when neglected (along the lines of "Hel-loooo? Type something here!"). Also, sometimes she sings. We don't get embarrassed often, but we got embarrassed then. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Reginald Pike Issues Open Call to Save Pig

OK then. Things just get weirder and weirder. A pig, Red, which recently appeared in a Perlorian Brothers-helmed commercial is apparently set to be slaughtered and the kind folks at Reginald Pike feel sorry for the little guy and want to save him:

Hello.

My name is Red.

I'm a pig.

Recently I had a supporting role in a television commercial for a major international cellular telephone provider. The commercial was directed by the Perlorian Brothers and written by Mother NY.

Everyone was very nice to me, and I think I did a pretty decent job for my first time on set, but I've since learned that I'm scheduled to be slaughtered in a week. This is not good for an actor's career. I knew it was a non-union job and the residuals weren't anything to get excited about, but I wasn't expecting to be hung by my foot and have my throat slit.

Fortunately, my new friends at Reginald Pike, Toronto, Biscuit, L.A., and Mother are working to find me a new home at a petting zoo (despite all this, I love humans). You can help me too by getting a limited edition t-shirt with my picture on it at http://www.reginaldpike.com

They're only $20 and proceeds go to my care and feeding.

Please help.

Alltel Wireless Campaign Continues Downward Spiral

The Alltel Wireless campaign, which began with the great concept of personifying competing mobile phone companies, continues it downward spiral with a second installment of its "mall geeks" cell phone company personification. Once again, the other companies try to get Alltel to end its MyCircle plan, this time with a bribe. It falls flat.

Nike Represents Motion With Solid Objects

Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam has done some nice work for Nike in its Team Nike ACG Fall campaign. The agencies blog explains the thinking behind the campaign made up of motion converted to solid objects representing that motion, writing, "The idea was to capture the fleeting beauty of their performance and turn it into something solid." You can see other ads in the campaign here.

IKEA Transforms Kitchen in Thirty Seconds

For IKEA Portugal, TBWA has created a commercial which captures the transformation of a kitchen from dowdy to chic illustrating how items from IKEA can take the bland out and add in some color. We like it.