The Toyota Rush! It Has Tires! That Leave (Possibly Blue) Tire Tracks!

The Bakery, Jakarta sent us to unleash-yourself.com for some subsite-ribbing fun.

Word on the street is that this is a campaign for the Toyota Rush mini SUV. But after clicking on both the High and Low Bandwidth options, little has happened, and we've blown at least a minute in a half staring at these blue skid marks.

That's a long time to be staring at skid marks.

Sprint Loves Itself Some NFL

Sprint is really laying it on thick with its "Sprint ahead" campaign. In tangent with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, SF, Exopolis has put together a Sprint ad that will appear on stadium jumbotrons this NFL season. It is called "NFL at SprintSpeed Jumbotron." No, we didn't make that up.

Anyway, the ad features a couple of football players running shrouded by darkness except for the ambient light and enchanted microfiber magic surrounding them. The end of the spot culminates in a glorified tackle that looks more like a Lifetime movie embrace. This tryst explodes into still more light, flying symmetrically out of the two bodies and toward the rest of the frame.

It's very Disney.

Then there's the Sprint logo. Then, "Proud sponsor and avid fan of the NFL."

Avid, eh?

'Big Bang' Flips with (Too Much) Ease from Smart to Banal

We're not sure how or why, but while trying to steal a Rich Media ad off MySpace we ended up downloading a widget for CBS' The Big Bang Theory.

After contemplating the widget for awhile we decided to look up the show. That quest brought us to this trailer, which is really less a trailer than a three-minute hard sell with a laugh reel and every cliche imaginable, strangely coupled with Bill Gates philosophy and new media name-dropping.

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Michael Mann Blends 'Last of the Mohicans' With Nike's Never Quit

Sit back in your chair. Close your eyes. Imagine the theme music from the movie The Last of the Mohicans welling up inside your head. Picture Daniel Day-Lewis running through the woods and over the mountaintop to save Madeline Stowe from certain death. Now, open your eyes and watch this new commercial (YouTube or higher quality on the U.S. Nike site) from Nike called Never Quit directed by Michael Man. It's transfixing. It's intense. It puts you in the game. It makes your blood rush. It sends chills through your spine. It proves there's more than money in the game of American football.

Now, turn the sound off and watch it again. Pretty lame, right? Music is masterful, even more so than video sometimes, at conveying and amping up a message. Of course, we're partial to this sort of emotional manipulation but, then again, isn't that what advertising's about? Thanks, Bill for calling this to our attention.

You Don't Need Hot Women to Sell Men's Underpants?

We like Stanfield's. We like Stanfield's because it knows it's a corny underwear brand (as opposed to the other extreme), worn by a bunch of mama's boys. Or at least agency John St. does. (It probably doesn't help that the company is Canadian.)

Stanfield's latest campaign, "Separating the Men from the Boys," takes a handful of "unmanly"-men and adds embarrassingly "manly" characteristics to them. One such man brings inordinate heft to an exercise ball. Another turns down guy's night for book club. And another sports the power of polar-therm by conducting a conversation in a cold freezer.

The audio is slightly disconnected from the video, so try not to let that drive you crazy.

TomTom's Mapshare Feature Puts Things Where You Want Them

To explain TomTom's mapshare feature which allows users to makes changes to maps, Pool Worldwide created this video. The first three minutes of the video explain how users can submit and confirm map changes. The last minute offer up some "cheat codes" which dramatically alter the landscape of Amsterdam by making changes to TomTom's mapshare database.

Security Cameras Monitor Agency Employees

Those working in the Ridgefield Park, NJ office of South Korean agency Cheil, which handles the Samsung account here, are probably feeling like Big Brother inhabitants right now after the agency installed 360 degree security cameras to monitor the office 24/7. Those surfing porn sites, spending too much time on Facebook or going to the bathroom too often for a quickie might find themselves the star in the agency's video archive.

Not that there'd necessarily be anything good to see but one has to wonder just how long it will take for some of this stuff will find its way to YouTube. Anyway, if you think time sheets are bad, be happy you don't have a camera over your head capturing every time you adjust your balls or tighten your bra strap.

'Hail, Stanford, Hail' is Down, Stanford, Down

Fall semester is here, so now we've got uni-oriented campaigns to sift through. "Hail, Stanford, Hail" is an effort for that one school in California whose name we'll let you guess. This is the site. Note that it's down (or was when we looked). Hail, Stanford, Hail.

But when it's up, it hosts two clever little videos that include college antics dubbed with a professorial narrative. Here's some trivia: Stanford is the alma mater for the inventors of the microwave and the FM synthesizer.

Marshmallow bunny molesters and Guitar Hero fanboys everywhere thank you, Stanford. And at the very least, your campaign was way better than Temple's. (Although we still like Wilkes best.)

Hey, where are the ad campaigns for Berkeley? Oh yeah, everybody there is still on strike and lamenting the recent loss of Bob Marley.

Hardee's Bootylicious 'Flat Bun' Teacher Causes Uproar in Tennessee

The Hardee's Flat Buns commercial has caused an uproar in Tennessee with Tennessee Education Association President Dr. Earl Wiman (who you've got to hear) saying, "It is unbelievably demeaning." The ad shows a female teacher dancing seductively in front of a class that raps about the positivity of flat buns which the teacher, of course, does not possess. The commercial is part of a campaign launched earlier this summer which included the Flat Buns website.

Wiman wants concerned citizens to complain to Hardee's, saying, "I am asking that all of our members and the public who care about children and their education to contact their local Hardee's to voice their concerns."

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Parker Bullshits, Ads Suck, Hyundai Un-Hyundais

- Calling AMC's Mad Men, Dr. Ernst Dichter's The Hidden Persuaders and current motivational research "mostly bullshit," George Parker manages to get himself into Advertising Age and promote his new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders which, if his past book, MadScam, is any indication, won't be bullshit at all.

- Magazines and newspapers aren't doing anything wrong. It's just that the ads inside them all suck.

- Hyundai's new campaign leaves behind the brand name hoping to leave behind associated cheapness.

- Has anyone else noticed how "bloggy" Advertising Age is getting and how it's now OK to "print" words like fuck and bullshit? We just thought we'd wonder publicly a bit about that.

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