Wal-Mart And Twelve Days of Christmas Save Etiquette Blunders

While everyone's embroiled in the Wal-mart/Julie Roehm debacle, the retailer is still out there pushing its wares. With a holiday theme including the singing of The Twelve Days of Christmas, the Jason Reitman-directed spot illustrates perfectly what it's like to show up at a party empty-handed and how Wal-mart can convert you from loser to sophisticated party-goer in the length of time it takes to sing a Christmas carol.

Actor Peter Boyle Dead, Chick-Fil-A Dreams, Ageny Overdoes Holiday Effort

- Cynopsis reports, "Peter Boyle, who portrayed the often cranky father in the CBS comedy Everybody Loves Raymond, died Tuesday in New York after suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease. He was 71 years old."

- Does this agency do any client work or do they sit around all year creating Christmas card videos?

- Chick-Fil-A has released a Ames Scullin O'Haire-created commercial promoting the SEC vs. ACC rivalry.

- We're reading George Parker's Madscam. We like it. We're not done yet but one YouTube user has and has published a video review of the book.

People In Need of an Intervention Convinced Bahamas Will Cure All

Hmm. These four news commercials for the Bahamas are both dumb and funny at the same time. To urge vacation-hesitant weirdos to consider the Bahamas as a destination, the spots center around a "Bahamavention" during which very weird stuf happens and people are converted into Bahamas vacationers. Is it just us or is that Bahamas logo strikingly similar to various versions of the Microsoft Windows logo?

Sara Lee Skin Care Campaign Releases Bravia-Style

Sanex, the Sara Lee body care brand (wait, don't they make frozen cakes?) is working with PR agency immediate future to release a European commercial Sony Bravia-style. The agency has set up a site that will follow the creation of the ad which involves "over 100 bodies imitating skin cells." We've been promised updates as the campaign develops and we'll share them with you, good or bad because, as you know, criticizing something can be as much fun as praising it.

UPDATE: Oops. Someone forgot to tells someone something. The ad's already out. So much for the sneak peeks. It aired in Denmark in November. We'll still share any goodies regarding the production of the ad if they are of any interest.

NewsFlash! Sex Doesn't Sell...At Least in America

Publisher Emap has shuttered the U.S. edition of its lad book title FHM. Apparently, the title isn't growing as much as the company would like. The U.K. edition of the magazine and the FHM's U.S. website will continue operation. Who new there cold be such a thing as too many scantily clad women for the market to bear?

Agency Christmas Cards Get Even More Elaborate

Back in the day, a Christmas card was just that, a card sent to clients thanking them for their business. Of course, that expanded to vendors, friends, family and the with the advent of the Internet, the entire world. What was once a simple secretarial...uh...administrative function has now become the hottest job on December's traffic list. Check out this entry from UK agency Proximity which dragged out the entire agency to appear in the thing. I guess one has to wonder what happens to general agency productivity on client work during Christmas card production week. Perhaps a footnote attached to the card acknowledging the amount of resources transferred from actual client work to Christmas card production is in order. Oh screw that. We're waiting for An Agency.com Christmas: The Movie.

Oh, and speaking of the Christmas card movie, here's one from Barkley. Something about a spaceman. We lost interest after a few minutes.

Oh, but any card that simply has the chipmunks singing and agency heads bobbling is a winner in our book. Sorry, we're easy to please. This one's from Tinsley Advertising. (Just who is that girl in the yellow bikini?) OK, OK, that sound loop is making our head explode!

Bloody Heads Urge Seatbelt Usage

Shock value is the new Second Life. Oh wait, we used up our lame Second Life references already. Anyway, we had Volkswagen crashing their cars to prove their safety. We had cars crash to urge people not to drink and drive. And then there's bloody hell breaking lose inside a car to prove to people wearing a seatbelt is far better than killing your friends with your head. Watch it and wear your seatbelt. It delivers a strong message but you won't see it on TV here in the States. We're way to squeamish about being that honest. We like our sugar coated lives and all the pretense that goes along with that fairy tale life.

Roehm Reamed, Homes Eaten, Mel Gibson Gets A Menorah

- Lost Planet thinks they've made a trailer for their Xbox 360 game that'll shatter cultural norms, change lives and trigger brain aneurisms on-sight. It's a fair trailer but it won't look that great six months from now when some other game has kicked its ass, as these things tend to go.

- Fledgling supermarket Bloom cozy up with agency BooneOakley to make a real-live gingerbread house in South Carolina (of all fucking places)! And yes, we will help them eat it.

- News from our incognito buddy FishNChimps: Coke steals from actual creative people. That always leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. And considering they've been riding the holiday polar bear thing and/or copying Pepsi's campaigns for the last two hundred years to the nth degree, that really came as no major shocker. To witness the fuckage of other creative companies, hit Urban Counterfeiters.

- Join NPR's first-ever holiday craft contest before it is gone. Forever. Perhaps you can beat the cleverly rendered Mel Gibson menorah. Yeah, you heard us. A Mel Gibson menorah. Craftwise, it could be unbeatable.

- SAB Miller's Columbia by Bavaria beer is raffling off the famed "Man Smoking" painting on February 28 as part of a promotion.

- Southwest Airlines...blah, blah, blah...CGM contest...blah, blah, blah...YouTube...blah, blah, blah...win a trip...blah, blah, blah and blah.

- AdJab is as pissed off as we are about people labeling things viral before they actually become viral.

- George Parker is all over Julie Roehm's ass crapping on her supposed avalanche or job offers, delivering the inside story on Draft/FCB's lack of promised analytics skills and poking holes in the Advertising Age Jonah Bloom "in-depth" Julie Roehm interview. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Starbucks Brainwashes Boston Cabbies

Catch Up Lady takes paranoid note of Starbucks' infiltration of Boston cab drivers, who seem to be in cahoots with It's Red Again, the pay-it-forward campaign that's got people doing all kinds of weird shit like buying baked goods for each other. And smiling! What's with the smiling?!

Catch Up Lady vows to bar herself indoors but to be honest we'd like to get in the way of the people giving out movie tickets and orgasmic pastries. Clearly another demonstration of how Starbucks intends to take over the world, to no positive end. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Newsflash! TimeLife Hooks Up With Brightcove to Release 'Get Smart'

Whoa. Stop the presses! Are you ready? Are you read ready for this? Now....oh, we're so excited about this...you, yes you, with help from TimeLife and Brightcove, can get...hold your breath...Get Smart: The Complete Collection. Yes! It's true! People have been clamoring for this for 40 years! Fourty years, my friends. Can you think of a more important DVD release to use when announcing a partnership a partnership between a big publisher and an online video/TV company? No, we didn't think so. Damn, these guys are good at generating buzz! Wow, that took a lot of energy to write. We have to go take a nap now and then order up our copy of Get Smart: The Complete Collection.