Few people are willing to turn a cupcake down; the very word makes us hungry. Knowing we could all use something extra to smile about, Little Debbie's taking one million brand-spankin'-new cupcakes to the streets.
The Little Debbie Share-A-Thon is fortified by an armada of shiny brown Smart cars, laced with the cupcakes' curly ribbon. Chase one down for a free sugar rush. (Or just wait for one to stop.)
Giveaway kicks off on October 18th, National Chocolate Cupcake Day. There's also a sweepstakes where you can actually win one of the shiny new cupcakey Smart Cars. (Watch out for chasers, though. You're gonna get chasers.)
Social media links and the feel-good, slightly quirky TV spots appear below the drop. They speak to the youthful, pursuit-of-happiness quality simmering just under the surface of tired overworked growed-ups. For a second, we actually missed trans fats. HIGH FIVE, Luckie & Co.!
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HBO follows up on the ridiculously-lauded Voyeur campaign with Imagine.
Visually, it's a storytelling mashup of the social cloud and the Mac Cube: a series of stories are told from different perspectives, and you'll need to see all four sides of each to get a complete picture of what's going on.
Production quality is, as always, Home Box Office-caliber. The first one we saw was Art Heist, and it sucked us into its drama-ridden tentacles with a quickness -- once we got the damn site to load. (Small price to pay for good ol'-fashioned passive entertainment.)
Also, doesn't seem to work on Firefox. Fix, somebody, fix!
To convey the endless possibilities to those choosing to avail themselves of Converse's new customizable sneakers, Anomoly created a collection of mutant (customized, get it?) animals which will appear on banners and on wild postings throughout New York.
The work is freaky but interestingly original. You can see it all here.
Oh wow. Way to introduce a new car! To hype the new MINI convertible and coupe, two twins who are referred to as Two Untamed prep us for the vehicles, unveiling at the Frankfurt Motor Show.
The pair have done several other videos leading up to this one which tease and don't show the vehicles. This last one shows us the goods. Sweet ride.
At ad:tech Chicago last week, and prior to his opening talk, I approached Denuo CEO Rishad Tobaccowala in hopes of scoring an interview later on. He was in a hurry and answered in a way I found brusque and upsetting -- which ended up colouring my feelings about the keynote.
Tobaccowala emailed to apologize immediately after reading the article I wrote, and was also good enough to give me almost three hours of his time in an interview -- more of a conversation, really -- later that week.
We never did get around to a formal Q/A. But I learned so much about branding and relationships from him that most of the gems would be lost if I didn't whip out the cam and start recording.
See the footage below the drop.
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OK so if you're bored with your life and you want a change, we think IKEA can help. At least that's the case in this commercial during which a man returns home from work, goes to turn on the TV and realizes it's not there anymore. Well, it is but it's behind a set of doors. And that's not the only thing that's changed in his house. In fact the entire place in different. IKEA has totally taking over the place. Everything's different. Everything's changed.
But it's not only the furniture that has changed...
Being in the service is like living in a bubble: you do as you're told, go where you're sent, and live on-base, which has its own restaurants, shops and medical centers.
So one of the scariest things about leaving the military is knowing what to do afterward. Four years in, it's hard to remember what civilian life is like; worse still, you're rusty with the social and professional politics.
To help future former military members get a head start, Plaid created AreYouG2G, a clever little site that helps them construct outside lives based on what they did in uniform.
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Instead of imposing changes that everyone inevitably just complains about later, the Chicago Transportation Authority decided to poll city inhabitants to find out how they'd improve the public transport service.
With help from Chicago Now, the entity created a huge street chalkboard where users could kneel down and write their views. Oh yeah, you could also leave opinions on a Chicago Now blog. But given the option between keyboard and chalk, we'd rather be clutching the latter.
Variant photo here.
"Schizophrenic Man Terrifies Kids at Party" is a YouTube piece released by English mental health charities Mind and Rethink under their "Time to Change" campaign. We like how it plays on our expectation of crass amateur video fare to illustrate two important messages:
o That people with mental disorders can function in society
o That retaining the stereotype of the off-the-hinge crazy person is counterproductive for everyone involved
It also reminded us that as kids, we were always screamy-scared about stuff we couldn't see, however facile or harmless said "stuff" actually was. And then, lightbulb moment, it was like hey, tripping out about schizophrenia is kind of like that.
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The wtf-is-that at left is actually a business card for AGRIE Paint Services.
It may not look like much, but pull that green tab for one of the most gratifying experiences: peeling electrical tape back from a freshly-painted wall.
Post-peel, here's what you find.
Pocked-sized wonder,* dreamed up by Extreme Group, Toronto.
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