Bugaboo Gets Fly On Stage For Bee

If you've never thought of a baby stroller as a stage prop for a choreographed dance sequence, you will now after watching this 72andSunny-created video for Bugaboo Strollers in which a group of fours dads go all Broadway to demonstrate the Bugaboo Bee's cool factor. It's not your average stroller commercial and that's a very good thing.

If Only the Commute Were Always This Cool

If only New York's trains were actually this cool all the time. Deutsch (yes, they still do stuff) tricked out Grand Central Shuttle trains for Westin Hotels making the train interiors look like the Caribbean, the rain forest and Iceland. Very cool stuff. Check it out here.

We Don't Have a Search Beast; We've Got an Ego Vacuum

On Wednesday morning at ad:tech in Chicago, I hit Managing the Search Beast, the first of the several SEM seminars I masochistically slated myself to take.

It was one of those seminars in which a speaker like David Doucette feebly tries pushing product (the Fairmont Hotel and Resorts) while the audience, every member of which thinks it's smarter than he, attacks with questions that, if you've ever worked in SEM, you know nobody knows the answers to.

And they're simple questions: "How did you track that social networking effort?" and "How do you prevent against click fraud?"

The crickets chirp in response. It's not that there aren't any answers; it's that marketing and sales guys rarely have a true sense of what's happening on the back-end when it comes to SEO. They pull the numbers from IT and that's the deepest it gets.

This is one reason why search engine marketing (poetically) highlights the growing tensions between marketing and tech.

You think Boyz n the Hood was scary? You've probably got similar tensions running between creatives and devvies - except without guns, and possibly more animosity.

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Smirnoff Debuts Tea Partay Sequel, 'Boyz N The Hillz'

Perhaps it's because we're squarely East Coast. Perhaps it's because sequels rarely, if ever, surpass the greatness from which they spawn. Perhaps its that we're much more prep at heart than West Coast Whacked. Perhaps it's just that this JWT New York-created Smirnoff Tea Partay sequel, Boyz in the Hillz, simply isn't as good as the original.

Oh sure, it rips West Coast oddities just as the original ripped East Coat preppy life but it doesn't seem to have the wit of the original. Of course, we could be completely wrong and this sequel may go on to garner millions more views than the millions the original achieved. Time will tell. But according to East Coast Tea Partay frontman Prescott, "those West Coast rappers are whacked, yo!"

Candystand's Fire and Ice is Total '80s Throwback

The bitchy thing about Candystand, which has long exhausted its welcome in the Adrants annals, is their advergames are actually really good.

Take this new one called Fire and Ice. With unique characters and quirky music, the game still manages to bring us back to the Super NES days, jumping over turtles and malicious red owls while trying to sate an endless lust for floating coins. We can't trash something we just blew half an hour playing.

Our only problem with it is it lacks that classic Mario speed-running feature. Do you hear us, advergame gods? We want a speed-running feature.

Bodygrooming Fembots Replace Double Entendre Bathrobe Guy

As we surmised earlier this month, Philips Bodygoom has taken its efforts the the next logical step. The marketer's agency, Tribal, has launched Robot Skin, an episodic series in which grooming robots, otherwise known as "the key that unlocks the version of yourself you always wanted to be," become the most desirable toy men can possess in the future. It's a a nice effort. After all, imagining a fembot stroking your various body parts is a lot more exciting than the mundane reality of an electric grooming device doing the same. And it's far better than that dude in the white bathrobe spewing double entendres about your nuts. But we do wonder if Svedka Vodka's fembot are gonna come knocking.

Change the body and the mind will follow. Or so the copy says.

Dell Reviews, Disney Buys Club Penguin, Deutsch Huffs, Sex Still Sells

- Dell's $760 million account is up for grabs and everyone wants it.

- Disney just gave the three Canadian dads who launched Club Penguin $350 million with another $350 million on the way in 2009.

- Catch Speedo King Donny Deutsch and uber political commentator Arianna Huffington at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas September 30 - October 2 when they speak at the Electronic Retailing Association convention.

- BL Ochman tells us how one brand, Kryptonite Lock, has improved its handling of social media outbursts dramatically since 2004 when it was awarded Business 2.0's Dumbest Business Moment of the Year Award.

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Getting A Drink Wasn't Easy Tuesday Night At ad:tech Chicago

For some reason, finding Chicago's Delacosta restaurant on 466 East Illinois is a challenge. While in town for the ad:tech show, I walked by it two times before realizing it was right in front of me. Adrants Co-Editor Angela Natividad had trouble finding it as well. And it's right there on East Illinois exactly where it should be. Perhaps it was the ultra-humid heat messing with our minds. Perhaps, at least for me, it was the mini-skirted, high-heeled, belly-shirted, stunningly beautiful woman I'd passed by on that very same sidewalk earlier in the day still clouding my mind. Perhaps I'm just dumb. Likely, it's the latter.

Anyway, I found the Wunderman/TDI-sponsored party at Delacosta. Angela found it. And so did buddy and UnSubCentral VP of Sales John Engler along with UnSub Central's Brian Ambrose and Rick. It was a small party with about 150 people but it was one of those parties where you could actually talk to people and the people you wanted to talk to where there. And, the food was very good. Far above the usual ad:tech-related party fare.

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Video (Hasn't Quite) Killed the OG Network Star

Tuesday morning at ad:tech Chicago, big brands like YouTube and Yahoo debated the likelihood that the Holy Grail, sought after by everyone from Indiana Jones to Tom Hanks, is (and perhaps always has been) in the unlikely hands of advertisers.

With every new medium comes a wave of schizophrenic behavior in which old media titans express fear, reproach and occasionally cavil at a "threat" that has seen no equal in history.

The movie industry did this with the arrival of VHS, and we do it today with online video - not without merit. Around a narrow corner lives the thinly-veiled concern that we might be kissing our cash cow, network TV, good-bye (and good luck), in favor of a mutable and virtually immeasurable entity: the internet.

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All-Bran Helps You Drop A Load

Magnificently magnifying metaphors, this recent All-Bran commercial from Kellogg has no problem touting its ability to aid one in shitting a brick. Or two. Or an entire dump truck load. Yes, the spot is jam packed with endless bowel movement metaphors. Enjoy.