Bart Says Everything Steve Jobs Probably Only Says, Off the Record, to NYT Reporters.

Last Sunday The Simpsons took the piss out of Apple: the brand experience, the cult of the white earbuds and even Steve Jobs' sermons on the mount.

To incentivize the watch for hardcore ad-heads, wait 'til the end, when a dude with a mallet recreates Apple's "1984."

Magical. Experience Mapple -- "It's so sterile!" -- below the drop (courtesy of Hulu).

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There's More Than One way to Skin a PSA

No sooner are we lauding the importance of honest, graphically intense PSAs, we get this from Strawberry Frog, "ChangingThePresent.org seeks to make the world a better place one gift at a time by connecting givers with 350 non-profit organizations offering 1,600 gifts and to a universe of 500,000 registered philanthropic organizations. The two :30 spots spoof traditional holiday commercials by poking fun of gifts like bow-topped cars by replacing it with a sheep adorned by a big red ribbon (supports the Heifer Project International), and a beautiful jewelry box containing a polio vaccine (UNICEF)."

Without belittling the very important objective this campiagn seeks to accomplish, it just feels like the wind has been removed from the sails. Or maybe it's just the sudden emotional shift from empathetic compassion to tongue in cheek humor. Both are good. Both can work. Let's just hope the two campaigns don't appear back top back which, of course, they won't becasue one is UK based and the other American. Just sayin'.

MINI's 'Creative Use of Space' Extends to Promote MINI E

Extending the Creative Use of Space campaign for MINI, which just won an Epica Silver Award, Berlin and Frankfurt-based Kreative Konzeption is out with a new promotion fo the MINI E, an electric powered version of the famed MINI. Housed on the campaign's Mini Space site, a design competition - the third for the campaign - called Electrified seeks to extend the original campaigns goal of encouraging creative use of space.

From site design to MINI rooftop design, entrants can submit their designs and view those of others on the Mini Space site. Four hundred designs have been submitted to date and a winner will be chosen February 4, 2009 by MINI Design Director Gert Hildebrandt along with the community.

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Ceiva Says Sit On Santa's Lap

It's December which means it's time to pull out all the holiday marketing gimmickary. Combining the ever favorite "send to a friend" feature with "upload your photo," Gold n Fish Marketing Group has created Sit On Santa's Lap, a site on which, yes, you can upload your photo which will automagically appear inside a Ceiva Digital Photo Frame. You can then. yes, send the video with your picture in it to a friend. And, yes, there's a chance to win $500.

So find your favorite Twitter or Facebook profile picture - you know, the one that makes you look much better than you actually do - and upload it. Show all your friends how amazing you look.

Newspaper Ad Revenue Plummets, Interns Rock, Kmart Gets Buzz

- The Newspaper Association of America reports newspaper ad revenue fell 18.1 percent or almost $2 billion in the third quarter of 2008. Online newspaper ad revenue fell as well.

- AdGabber member Buddy Wachenheimer envisions what condom packaging would look like if it were sponsored.

- If your an agency struggling with workload after having laid off half your staff, check out YouIntern. It's always nice to, as YouIntern proudly states in its tagline, gain "freedom from coffee and coffee" so you can work on the more important stuff like sitting in a traffic meeting. Oh wait. Sorry about that. Bad example.

- IZEA is out with a blog campaign for Kmart which is getting a lot of Twitter buzz.

Ugly Reality of Child Abuse Rears Its Head in PSA

It seems public service advertising is the only kind which contains any sort of meaningful drama or that's allowed to depict reality without being glossed over by meaningless creative pontification. All other forms of advertising pale in comparison. Mostly because PSAs depict real life. And real life is a far cry from the kind of fairy tale life painted inside the cozy confines of an ad campaign.

British children's charity Barnardo's is out with a powerful commercial in which a girl is repeatedly subjected to the after effects of child abuse. As the commercial progresses, the girl's troubled life is repeated with increasing intensity until it culminates with the rapid fire reality of child abuse, a cycle that, if unchecked, is doomed to repeat tself over and over again until dramatic steps are taken to prevent it.

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Sean John Extends Puke-Inducing Campaign to Video

In what simply has to be a joke, Sean Combs/John/Whatever released a video (which he painfully calls "a blog" ... it's a POST, people. A POST on a BLOG) for the movie I Am King. And the best part? He wants to be the next James Bond. Seriously. Or not.

The entire campaign -- which promotes his new fragrance -- is so far fetched, it's not easy to discern the difference between joke and cringe-worthy creative intent.

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LL Bean Paints White Christmas on Cozy Canvas

Every scene in "Making Christmas," a glimpse into one family's holiday, belongs in a frame on a department store mantelpiece. It's a painfully pretty picture of someone else's life -- never mine, maybe yours; you can almost touch the glossiness.

I like the scene where The Men walk in with the presents, then there's coloured paper everywhere, then this short gorgeous shot of a doe-eyed freckled boy. Moments like that make an otherwise-discreet* ad priceless -- part of the narrative of a viewer's season.

All that lux, casual idleness is punctuated by a page number -- "Page 55," "Page 49" -- printed in LL Bean's catalogue typeface. Nice tie-in.

By GSD&M Idea City with help from Sticks+Stones. Background track is Valley Winter Song by Fountains of Wayne. More fun facts here.

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Stripvertising, Social Media Etiquette, Pot-Driven Cautionary Tales

- Hurtin' for love? Advertise on a stripper's apple bottoms. Dolla make you holla! (Via.)

- BU needs money too.

- Mind your social media Ps and Qs.

- The rumours are true: it snows in Switzerland.

- Ivanka Trump blogs for Brides.com.

- Bogus Nike discount code. Boooo. (Hoooo.)

- Maybe that dam is somebody's house.

- Possibly the best marijuana PSA evar. If you watch it while high on 4/20, the universe will fold in on itself. Also, just for the record, I have ironed my hair while under the influence. It is so, so dangerous.

Starbucks Goes (red).

Late to a party long populated with the likes of AmEx, Apple, Converse, Motorola, Microsoft, Dell, The Gap, and Giorgio Armani, Starbucks finally joins the Product (red) brigade, spearheaded by U2's Bono to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Buy a Starbucks exclusive beverage, save lives in Africa! If the watch-worthiness of the ad isn't equal to the cause, it's at least a tribute to the crippling mediocrity that halos brands grown lazy and slow. Way to go, BBDO!

If I'm shocked, it's only because this didn't happen sooner. Really. This has to be a record for the amount of time a top-heavy "lifestyle" company's spent resisting the rejuvenating call of Bono.

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