Watch Around Water Asks 'Where Is Your Child?' with Fake Dead People

Australia's Watch Around Water is placing images of a little drowned boy at the bottom of swimming pools.

At some point we figure people are going to catch onto this whole fake-dead-people-as-props trend, and when they do they'll come across some real dead people and scoff. Then what are we going to do? Say "I'm sorry"?

No. The boy who cried wolf did that. Nobody believed him. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

PayPerPost Mocked With NASCAR-Style Blog Ad Model

Since its seems some companies think it's just fine to pay bloggers to write positive stuff about companies without disclosure, Jim Turner has offered up yet another blog advertising model that mirrors the logomania of NASCAR. He's kidding of course. Of course, we thought PayPerPost was kidding too when they announced their bribe-a-blogger business model.

Fat Guy Makes Anti-Farmer's Tan Shirt

Okay. We're not really sure what this Kyle Bone dude is doing with the whole anti-shirt thing, but apparently it has to do with a bunch of parachutes falling on his middle-American town.

To clarify, a PR guy sends us the following background on the docu-style campaign:

"Microsoft believes in the power of big ideas, and that there are countless great business ideas all over America, just waiting to happen. With the right tools, they can flourish and maybe even change the world. Microsoft small business account wants to help small businesses by giving away free software and the opportunity to make big ideas into reality."

Hm. Well, the US was the first country in history to include the pursuit of happiness in its ideal of unalienable rights, so whatever. But for the record and for our own pursuit of happiness, or at least snide smugness, we are playing with the idea of creating a "Lame" category in Kyle's honor. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Sand Flys in the Second Life Sandbox

Oh for fuck's sake. It's like a bunch of kids throwing sand at each other in a sandbox. Apparently, some Second Life dude stole some virtual possessions of others (using this replicator thingy called Copybot) and those others (sounds like Lost here) retaliated by shutting down their businesses all across Second Life and hanging "Sorry, We're closed. Thanks to Copybot!" signs in front of their businesses. And marketers really want to get into this muck.

UPDATE: Linden Labs, creator of Second Life has banned the use of Copybot. OK, boys.You can put all the sand back in the box now.

Bloggers Paid to Write Positive Stories, Model Questioned

Underscore Marketing President Tom Hespos, at the recent New York ad:tech conference, interviewed PayPerPost representative Britt Gustafson. PayPerPost has sparked a bit of a controversy since its launch four months ago because it pays bloggers to write positive stories about marketers without requiring bloggers to disclose which stories on their blog are PayPerPost stories and that they have received money to write them. Personally, we think it's a terribly shameful business model and one that will cause much harm to the already struggling trust level of bloggers. Give the interview a read and we'd love to hear your thoughts.

Kid Films & Big Pharma Mingle on Flu Facts

There's been some longtime discomfort about Happy Feet, a penguin-centred love story that whored it out behind the scenes with any company willing to toss bills in its direction. (Seriously. It has a lot of sponsors.)

Among its largest suitors - er, sponsors is Roche, seeking to promote its spankin' new anti-flu drug Tamiflu. This is the first liaison ever between a pharmaceutical company and an animated film.

Roche just launched a campaign for a site called Flu Facts. Incestuously, Happy Feet penguins on billboards refer families to Flu Facts and Flu Facts in turn refers back to Happy Feet. There's even a zip code function in which you can find out if the flu is in your area.

Which area isn't it in? Guess if penguins need Tamiflu then we all do. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Scott Shoots for Funny - and Succeeds, but Not In the Way They Hope

A PR guy asked us to say something about Scott's Clog Clinic/Halftime Flush campaign but we had some trouble taking the e-mail seriously. And upon visiting the site we were disappointed to find it wasn't as funny as the e-mail. So we're going to not talk about it at all and post our favourite parts of the e-mail instead. Enjoy.

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Jason Lee Promotes Streethorsing Jacket

We're not really sure what's happening here but from what we gather a company called WESC sells leather jackets you can wear while on a horse and raising hell in the city at night. Oh wait. That's a sport? That's horseshit. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

MINI Mail Makes Sending Email A Painfully Laborious Chore

Sure it's cool to have a send-to-a-friend feature on your site but when it take 30 to 60 seconds just to load, it's really not that much fun when a simple browser File > Send Link action will do just fine not to mention much faster. Yea, the creative and graphics on this Mini site are cool and all but sometimes practicality gets lost on one of the scraps of paper left on the floor of the creative conference room during concepting.

The funniest part of this whole feature is the copy which reads, in part, "Type in your friend's email address and the message you'd like to send. And wait for the smoke to clear. Like all things MINI, make it quick." Well, we'd love to make it quick but all of us don't have optical T1/T3/whatever Internet connections nor the site loaded into our cache because we've been obsessively viewing it over and over to make sure our creative work is perfect.

Madonna Benetton Ad Interestingly Timed With Adoption Controversy

Make the Logo Bigger points us to a new Benetton ad in which Madonna candidly poses with her three children, including the boy from Malawi whose dubious adoption she's actively campaigning to defend. But hey, we're willing to bet at least $1 that one has nothing to do with the other. - Contributed by Angela Natividad