HP Plays Eye Tricks on Strolling Malaysians

To demonstrate how well an HP printer can print, Publicis/Malaysia punched paper holes in realistic-looking landscapes. One dog-eared strip shared the gospel of HP with bewildered passersby.

Neato. Variations here and here.

Why Rubberneck from the Freeway When You Can Do it From YouTube?

Few things are more irritating than a manufactured crisis intended to scare you straight -- in this case, using the human tendency to rubberneck to guilt drivers into slowing down in less dire situations. Then again, few things are more provocative.

It's a fine line, I guess.

The stunt took place on Matakana Road in New Zealand. And if the logo on the marquee is anything to go by, I guess this was brought to New Zealanders by the Rodney District Council.

Huzzah -- I was right. Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi. Thanks in:fluencia for pushing it our way.

Painted Hotties Hand Out Free Hotel Room Keys For Harrah's

So how to you promote the opening of a new tower at Harrah's hotel in Atlantic City? You hire hot models, have an artist paint their bodies and parade them around cities across the Northeast, of course. Oh, and you also give away...for free...all 945 rooms in the tower for one night by having the hot, painted models hand our room keys.

Yesterday, the promotion took place near Wall Street near 100 Broadway. Peter Shankman, the mastermind behind the promotion, sums up the day on his blog (with pictures of the hot models, of course) and offers up tips for those considering similar marketing events. Needless to say, the models attracted all kinds of attention and all the keys were handed out.

Mazda Goes Mod Way, and Slightly Out of Cultural Coherence, with 'How Dare You!'

Tearing a page out of Dell's playbook, Mazda's latest spot features sinister robotic women with a minimalist sense of style. Watch as they pursue a cherry-red Mazda 3 with hive mind perseverance, then attack it with off-white paint.

The car sits a moment, bathed in the colour of hotel linens, then scrapes to a start and washes the world in red -- including its (possibly Vicodin-dazed) antagonists. The premise is to fight conformity ... but it looks like one monochrome universe just makes way for another.

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BusinessWeek Grants Microblogging Some (Very Late) Validation

Last week, writer Stephen Baker of BusinessWeek wrote a collaborative article with Twitter users. The compilation took several days and generated more than 250 contributions, including quotes and citizen reporting.

The result, "Why Twitter Matters," was published today. (Expect tons of linkbacks to individual tweets, not to mention gratuitous use of "tweet" itself.) Looks like the stream-of-thought community just won a new convert.

Hey, Baker. Think Twitter ex-architect Blaine Cook looks anything like Jesus?

Social Hotties Endorse Their Favorite Brands

Well OK. So now when you troll MySpace, Facebook or whatever your favorite daily social diversion may be, you can view, yes, even more ads courtesy of SocialVibe, a service that lets people choose brands they wish to endorse with a widget they can embed on their profile pages or blogs.

For example, Nicole Lynn's cleavage endorses...oops, I mean Nicole Lynn endorses Adobe. By displaying the SocialVibe badge on profile pages, people get points they can use to donate to charities as well as the chance to win trips, gadgets and entry to events.

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Travails of Miley Cyrus Illustrate Need For Destigmatized Sex

It's probably just me. No, I'm sure it's just me but I'll ask the question anyway.:Is there something strange about Miley Cyrus jumping immediately from that Vanity Fair/Annie Leibovitz "scandal" -- where she was portrayed as, well, a bit more sexy than our sexually repressed society can handle -- to an appearance in the Body by Milk campaign, where she sports...white stuff all over her lips?

One could argue it's just a natural transition to the next level of, um, participation in the oh-so-seedy activity of -- OMG! -- engaging in dirty sex acts. But, that would be gross so let's just leave that stuff on the table.

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Hey, Mom. How About Exchanging that Dignity for a Month's Worth of Free Brownies?

In hopes of selling, I don't know, more sweet potato casserole through May, Boston Market is trying to turn Mother's Day into a month-long event.

Visit The Moms Party to check out the campaign. And if you really want to make the matriarch cringe, upload her picture into a "President of the Moms Party!" poster.

It could always be worse.

Anyway, all members of the Moms Party will get free desserts with purchase through May at Boston Market. The more views your mom-inate (get it? Like "candidate"?) poster receives, the more likely your mom is to become the party leader.

Horrors.

2/3 of a Donation Drive is Provoking Empathy. Will Ferrell Can't Do It; This Might

For MTV and the Burma Arts Board, Shilo and Ogilvy & Mather/Amsterdam created the "Burma Viral," which will air on MTV's Times Square Jumbotron and elsewhere around the world.

The film depicts war planes lifting off all over the world and meeting over Burma. I watched with a pinch of irritation as their hatches open, expecting bombs and the requisite sight of human suffering, but -- unexpectedly -- the planes rain a canopy of flowers over the cityscape.

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Pepperidge Farm Gets Racy. Or is it Racist?

In a lengthy analysis of a recent Pepperidge Farm print ad for the company's Milano cookie, Beyond Madison Avenue in which such details as "soul mates" versus "soulmates" are examined, the writer points to another take on the ad, from 360Nu.com, which...wait for it...calls the ad racist. Yes. A racist cookie ad.

It seems there may need to be a WTF category added to Adrants to house all these idiocies. However, before immediately tossing this off as yet another case of Chronic Overthink, the 360Nu writer offers interesting commentary on marketing, advertising and packaging as they relate to the reflection, creation, perpetuation or racial stereotypes.

Using two examples, angel food cake with white frosting over black cake and Devil Dogs with black ...stuff over the white, a corollary is made between the white over black as positive and the black over white as negative (devil).

Whether or not you decide to file this away in your own personal WTF category, you should at least read the piece firts. Then you can label the writer a crack pot or an insightful genius.