American Apparel Makes Friday Masturbation Day

Having followed the American Apparel campaign for some time, Copyranter reacted to the latest iteration with the following headline, "It's Friday. Why Don't You Masturbate." One can't ask for a better headline when it comes to discussing American Apparel campaigns which, for a long time, have been one step above porn. It's just Dov Charney's way and who are we to complain. Sex is supposed to sell, right?

Trunk Monkey Returns, DC Does Ad Week, Baby Not Bulletprof

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The Trunk Monkey has returned. Sadly, he's not as funny as he once was.

- The Creative Weblogging Network has launched a self-service shop to help advertisers choose from its 130 blogs.

- Seems Washington DC doesn't want to miss out on the fun and has launched its own Advertising Week to be held September 17-21.

- More smelly ads can be found in the Los Angeles Times.

- Not that anyone heard of it in the first place but the creators of Bullet Proof Baby want us to know the site was part of a promotion for the movie Shoot 'Em Up.

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Red Strip Sells Beers to Paraplegic Drunk

There's just no end to the fuckery contextual advertising delivers. This time, we have Red Stripe beer advertising directly next to a story about two guys who got arrested while driving the same truck...together...while drunk. Even weirder, one of the guys was a paraplegic so he steered while his friend worked the pedals. You just can't make this shit up.

I'll Take Some Air Conditioning With That Global Warming Billboard

Alt Terrain's W. Thomas Porter snapped this shot of an Ad Council Robertson Foundation global warming billboard which offers onlookers two choices: do nothing or go to the fightglobalwarming.com/nyc site. Appropriately, two window air conditioners poke through the board next to the do nothing selection. Perfect.

Farting Farmer and Nice Cans Sell Microbrewery

If you like farms with pigs, cows, fish, farting farmers, aliens and atomic bombs that launch out of grain silos, you're gonna love this new site for Butternuts Beer & Ale from Woods Witt Dealy & Sons. just click around and have fun. Don't forget to click on the tractor in the back.

Along with the website, the campaign also includes print ads, table tents, packaging, posters and a MySpace page, all of which can be seen here. In one of the print ads, the cans are celebrated with the write-itself headline, Nice Cans. The ad is also carries a blue ribbon honoring the breweries position as best brewery in Garrattsville, New York. Not that there's any other brewers there which , of course, is the entire point of the ribbon.

Dubbed "farmhouse ale" (whatever that is) the beer's got great names like Porkslap, Heinnieweisse and Moo Thunder. If a microbrewer has to set itself apart from the pack, aligning the brand with farm nomenclature is certainly one way to do it.

Vogue Invites us to 'Feel the Glam Forest,' We Politely Decline

The notion that out there is a wilderness dripping with pleasures in the raw is incredibly attractive. That's why Willy Wonka's candy forest still lingers in our dreams.

We're also guessing that's what Lowe, Athens had in mind when it invented a world ornamented in jewelry for Vogue (not the magazine). See variation here.

From a distance, the ads look compelling. Up close, they strike us as clumsy and pedestrian. The jewelry seems copy/pasted, and something about the way the models are dressed evokes a poorly-stocked costume rack in some photo studio we hope to never visit.

And come on. The glam forest? Really? Was that the best you could do?

Sprint Leaps Onto the Goodship Manning, Just in Time for Football Season

We were beginning to think there was no longer any such thing as sites that take two minutes to load and count to or from 100 the whole time.

But Manning's Mind, a new promotion for Sprint by Goodby, defeats that logic.

Post-load, the site is actually not bad. It just isn't anything special. Take Peyton Manning on in a trivia-style game where each point won brings you closer to a touchdown.

It appears Peyton Manning is one of the only sports celebrity sponsors who's actually used for what he has to say. We don't know what that means, but it's interesting.

Getting You Car Stolen is a Nightmare. And Farmer's Insurance Knows Nightmares!

It's not often we're surprised by an ad. This one by Campbell-Ewald for Farmer's Insurance scared the crap out of us. And the guy in it kind of looks like Kevin Spacey.

Other spots from the taglined "Sanity makes a comeback" effort were equally interesting. There's this wind insurance one where a woman's papers keep blowing around (wait for the part where she slams into the wall and breaks it - that's pretty funny), a confusing one where a woman leaps on a garbage truck and hitches a ride with a cop on a horse (it was fun guessing what that was for), and a pretty good one about transient suburbanites getting by after a house fire.

We like this campaign a lot - it does a neat job of crawling into the minds of people actually dealing with hazards in real-time.

And the Denver Water Mascot is Off!

AdFreak reminded us that the Denver Water stunt just took place over the weekend during the Colorado-Colorado State game. During the fourth quarter, the toilet mascot went running across the green, only to be tackled by a zealous security guard. (Looks like they forgot to wear their signs.)

So there you go. Unless you want all your favourite sports games interrupted in equally vexing manner, fix your goddamn running toilets.

Look, a Volvo Scavenger Hunt!

70 Volvos are hidden in a bunch of beautiful but rugged places and according to this subsite it is your responsibility to find out where. (Despite the daunting sound of the task and the lameness of going Volvo-hunting, clues and a Yahoo! Maps integration help the process along.)

More interestingly, is it just us or is the music for the subsite a throwback to the score for Vanilla Sky? It's probably just us.