Macs Fight PCs Evil Dead-Style

Those Mac vs. PC ads? Tame in comparison to this grudge match between Mac and PC advocates created by Canada's Accident Factory. Cool. Very, very cool. Very very graphic. Very, very gross. Very, very awesome. The ending, though, is the best. It illustrates the absolute silliness and irrelevance of the Mac vs. PC wars.

Marriage Proposal Goes Horribly Wrong, Insurance Sold

A while back when I was actually creating advertising rather than shamelessly trashing it, we held a video contest for a jeweler and asked people to send in videos of their marriage proposals. We picked the best, worst, strangest, funniest, etc. and give them a big discount at the jeweler. I know...giving a discount after the ring's been brought and the proposal's been made is, to say the least, illogical. Then again, this is advertising. More likely, I can't remember the details and the promotion was something completely different that how I remember it.

Anyway...here's yet another in the long line of marriage proposal gaffes that offer never ending hilarity. It's for Aviva Insurance (not even a jeweler!) and was created by Taxi Toronto.

God Belittled, Broccoli Faced, Dove Examined, Elastic Pathed

- The British Humanist Association has launched a transit campaign on London buses claiming "There's probably no god."

- Not as racy as the tweaked Disney Video/DVD covers of old, the designers of Canadian Farm Frozen Broccoli packaging had some fun.

- Speak Media Blog's Jennifer Jones takes a long look at the Dove Real Beauty campaign that's been running in various forms over the past four years.

- Have the day's of FuckedCompany returned? Yahoo will lay off 1,400.

- ihaveanidea has announced its D&AD 2008 Screening North American Tour. Dates and ticket info are here.

- Using $15,000 as a start up loan, Harry Chemko and Jjason Billingsley launched online retail software company Elastic Path. It's a $10 million company now and the pair were recently awarded BDC's Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Wow. It's Everything I've Ever Wanted in a Stimulant.

A pill that increases libido and decreases cellulite?" Let Slim Seduction -- don't you love that name? -- show you! Hit the site for Extremely Persuasive surveys, before/after shots, video testimonials and BIG RED TYPEFACES.

The ad hit me while I was reading a political and religious tirade on Dooce.com, which goes to show diet companies don't discriminate much in terms of audience. All you need to do is be female and have skin.

Twitter vs. Yammer, STD E-Cards, Mac/PC Face-Off, Meghan McDreamy

- Marvel's soliciting the YouTube community for the best comic-inspired costumes. Get dressed, flip your camera on and keep your videos down to a minute. Beyond licensing an entire suite of heroes and villains to Hollywood, I guess that's one way to stay relevant.

- Got VD? The decent thing to do would be to tell everybody you slept with, so they can check if they have it too. But don't sweat it too much; this is the digital age! Send those hutches an e-card. (Thanks Adrants reader Candace.)

- Not quite The West Side Story, but it's Macs and PCs, so almost the same thing.

more »

Meijer Brings Headless Horseman to Waking Life

Last Friday a headless horseman galloped eerily across Chicago's building facades. The night marauder rode for four hours between the Loop and Wrigleyville.

Who woke him up? Meijer, which gave people a chance to win $1000 if they texted the company directly upon seeing the apparition. Flyers were distributed to prime people for the sighting; and whenever the van projecting the Horseman stopped or idled in traffic, the horse would rear its hind legs and flash the message: text Meijer for a grand.

A purported several hundred texts arrived over the course of the four-hour campaign. Dubbing it a success, the street team plans to repeat the work this Friday in Cincinnati.

Advertising Community Site AdGabber Hits 6,000 Members

Today, the 6,000th member joined AdGabber, a Ning-powered community site for the advertising industry. Created and managed by Adrants, the site offers all the usual social networking goodies such as photos, videos, forums, groups, events, jobs, blogs, profile pages, news feeds, commercial and all kinds of other networking goodness.

If you're in the ad business, you should be hanging out at AdGabber so you can find out what everyone else in the industry is doing and then copy it...uh...get inspired and motivated to create your own masterpiece.

more »

So, Like, I Heard BBDO Only Hires D-Cups. Hey, Why Don't You Go Check?

To promote the Li Yue Long Men Young Creatives Competition, BBDO/Shanghai is using this :45 video to spread the weirdest rumour: that all its female staff members are D-cups.

Finding three young D-cups in all of Asia is a feat, which alone made the video worth watching. I also like the effect the cheesy music had on this slow exploration of the Shanghai office. It made all that leering look less ... leery.

more »

Tooth Rag Gets Star Treatment

Somebody* just alerted me to a dentistry publication called Dear Doctor - Dentistry & Oral Health. Its president and publisher, Dr. Mario Vilardi, aims for the magazine to wax the common sense of Dear Abby, coupled with the vapid gawk-appeal of People.

Toward that end, each new issue sports the distinctive pearly-whites of a star.

It isn't immediately clear how deep we get to dive into the mouths of people we idolize on television. Deliciously sordid details, like the number of cavities they had as children, or shots of them in head gear, will probably not grace the pages of Dear Doctor. So I'm not sure what else to say about this, aside from, hey, I guess star power can serve any interest.

more »

Fortify's Golden Server Offers Cups Full of Witty Geekisms

Having worked in the segment for quite some time, I can attest to the boredom of working on business to business ad campaigns. There's only so much speed and feed bullshit you can take before your head explodes...or you go out and hire a big breasted floozy, a dude in a tuxedo and layer on an endless supply of metaphors and double entendres.

more »