Paper Pigskin Advergame Reels Emails in for Sheraton

Sheraton's Ultimate Paper Football Challenge is a little mindless fun for a slow workday. Keep an eye on that pesky west wind.

In case you naively wondered what paper football has to do with Sheraton, here's the catch: the game requires registration. I anticipate much spam in exchange for these two minutes of pleasure.

By Gigantic.

Google for Obama, SBUX Blamed for Economic Meltdown, SMS on Your Tab

- Like that other demi-god Oprah, Google takes a side in this tense, farcical battle for America's future.

- Speaking of Google, check out the drool-worthy exposure T-Mobile's getting on its homepage. (It's probably worth mentioning that Google serves over 71 percent of searches in the US.)

- By the way, did you know McCain's a Ford and Obama a BMW? Think on that while casting your ballot.

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'They'll Block Out the Sun ... and Hell Follows Them.'

I saw this ad for Resistance 2 last night while watching Fringe. Maybe it was the context, or the very large screen, but I found it deliciously chilling.

Product footage and 'net research reveals it's just another shooter game with an old premise: mankind versus an alien race.

Meh. How very Stargate SG-1, circa '98.

Somehow I thought Resistance 2 would be richer, like Heroes before everybody had a power, or like Fringe, which has me stuck on genetic manipulation, corporate conspiracies and string theory.

Where's my MMOG?

Fortify's Golden Server Offers Cups Full of Witty Geekisms

Having worked in the segment for quite some time, I can attest to the boredom of working on business to business ad campaigns. There's only so much speed and feed bullshit you can take before your head explodes...or you go out and hire a big breasted floozy, a dude in a tuxedo and layer on an endless supply of metaphors and double entendres.

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Millie. Mouse. Eh.

MCM Net and Aardman partnered to produce Creature Discomforts, a campaign for the Leonard Cheshire Disability charity. Its purpose, I think, is to encourage outsiders to change the way they perceive disabilities.

I'm just confused about how. The campaign launched a game called Peanut Pickup, where you, a mouse, shoot peanuts into an elephant's trunk. That's it.

It isn't clear what lesson I was meant to glean (could it be a hand-eye coordination game for disabled children...?), but all I could gather was it isn't nearly as fun as Suicide Kittens -- which, for a minute or two, I mistook for another component of the Creature Discomforts campaign.

Nebraska Princess's YouTube Debut, Little Big Planet's Qu'ran Faux Pas, Hummer Dummer

- Make magazine offers Twitter support. Hey, neato.

- Wayne Wang's The Princess of Nebraska premiered on YouTube last Friday. Which brings up the usual "dawn of a new era?" questions.

- Ecast MixMaster helps decide how best to get you trashed.

- O noes, kids and search and porn.

- Little Big Planet alienates Muslims. I would never have guessed.

- The essence of blogging.

- Do you dare mess with someone else's Hummer -- even for love of advertising? Good luck and godspeed.

Racetrack Screensavers!

Oh, the things you can do when your boss is away. Some kids at Dm9ddb/Brasil set their screensavers up to look like corresponding pieces of the same race track.

It actually turned out pretty nifty. You know that feeling you get when you create a successful domino effect? You're both impressed and slightly surprised, right? That's what this was like.

The objective was to disseminate the game Virtual Global Race (or was it just to promote Intel? I can't really tell). The screen savers took a month -- and 20 people -- to perfect. See making-of.

Fickle Men Drink Fickle Whisky ... and That's All There is to Say About That

Wiser's Canadian Whisky is the drink of choice for The Wiserhood, a self-proclaimed Society of Uncompromising Men. (That doesn't actually mean much; just that they'll only drink "the most uncompromising whisky on the planet.")

A visit to the site is a sneak-peek into a buzzing fraternity. Click on different things to engage games, watch ads or see what the security cams picked up. I clicked on the bookshelf, garnished with the requisite skull, and found myself face-to-face with a giant media system.

There's also a semi-fun ice cube-catching game behind a statuette of The Thinker.

By John St, which recently did a breast cancer thing involving mens' hyper-fixation with boobage.

Just Another Square in a Wide-Brimmed Hat.

Jake of Zoomdoggle is scruffy and cute, so you must love him. Do everything he says. In this case, find the 8000 Indiana Jones hats he and his friends have hidden all over LA, and take pictures of yourself being just as animated and ironic as he is. (Don't forget to tag them!)

Adrants reader Jay notes this apparently casual scavenger hunt was announced the same day Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out on DVD, so he's pegged it as a below-the-radar marketing ploy. "Wonder what they're going to do with all the pictures," he ruminates suggestively.

I'm sure we'll all find out.

UPDATE: Cunning's 'fessed to using Jake and Friends as vehicles for an over-arching Indiana Jones promotion. (Not in so many words, but I feel my assumptions are safe -- or if not, they'll be corrected with lightning speed. See comments.)

Nice save.

Poltergeist Pondered, Obama Games, Men Prefer Sex Over Internet

- AdFreak's Tim Nudd notes some think if DirecTV's Poltergeist commercial is in bad taste given that Heather O-Rourke who played Carol Anne died in 1988 at age 12.

- This BBDO-created Guinness commercial in which refrigerators are magnetically drawn to a Guinness truck is quite good.

- Here's eight steps to writing in narrative format which sells.

- Gamepolitics reports team Obama placed an ad inside the Xbox game Burnout Paradise. The game's maker, EA, will neither confirm nor deny whether or not money changed hands for the ad or if it's simply great Photoshop work.

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