We wish we'd noticed this sooner. Jetpacks just celebrated his 365th post, commemorating a year since he began the blog we so enjoy reading.
To keep the seething throng happy, he's promised to add an "Open Mic Night" to his sidebar, through which he'll post homemade recordings open to "ridicule, scorn and derision." We just listened to the first one and felt chills.
Cheers, Jetpacks. And for all the awesome you brought us in the past year, we have decided to pay you in - yes! - groupies.
For client Earthjustice, Human Ideas/Space150, Minneapolis launched a site called Adopt the Sky, which enables the air-quality-conscious to adopt a square mile of the sky for free.
We say "air-quality-conscious" because by adopting part of the sky you sign a petition for better air quality regulation. ("Anything to reduce our capitalistic footprint, right?" quips the press guy.)
The compilation will later be delivered to the EPA, where new ozone limits are currently being tossed across the table.
We had a lot of fun claiming some sky. Our only two regrets were use of the word "fluffly" (which now rings far too sweet and cozy for so sexy an ad site) and inadvertently purchasing space above Virginia. That was a complete oversight.
We liked this would-be viral for Umpqua Bank by Creature, which showcases the travails of the budding entrepreneur from the eyes of a seven-year-old "lemonaire" who hasn't yet learned there are myriad ways in which life can maim and destroy the dreams you hold dear.
Of potential lemonade stand competitors, the little hero ambitiously opines, "I'm gonna crush them and turn them into parking lots."
We're touched.
We also like the tack Umpqua took in not putting together some gritty astroturf viral. They effectively converted an obscure brand we've seen on a couple of drab buildings into a sunshiny, fun place to teach one's kiddies about the value of money ... and interest rates.
It's worth mentioning that Jim Haven served as creative director on this spot. We'd hate on him some more but we're still pleasantly sedated by all the yellow on the Lemonaire site.
While we can appreciate the effort put into this DraftFCB Irvine online work for Taco Bell, Fourth Meal, which presents itself as a late night resource for night owls, it's a bit kludgey considering the hundreds of other similar online efforts which have come before it. Doing the Taxicab confessions thing, visitors can ride a cab around the city, check out late night hot spots added by users and record their own confessions for upload. Maybe Dunkin' gave us a decaf this morning by mistake but this just isn't hitting us.
The Jesuits, an order of Catholic priests founded in the 1500s, have decided to make Second Life their latest site of evangelical expansion.
"Second Life is not simply a 'closed' phenomenon," writes Father Spadaro of the Jesuits, who outlined a detailed plan on the benefits and hazards of the virtual world, as well as instructions on becoming a resident. "It is a real living environment that every day extends its frontiers and increases the number of residents. We cannot close our eyes to it."
After smut trades and regulation came barging through the doors, it was only a matter of time before religion came a-knocking gently.
Or not.
LittleJohn pointed out this effort by Heap Media, which posits that computers exert less energy if they display black screens instead of white ones. This does make sense considering on older TV sets, light only shines through areas that deviate from the darkness you see when the machine is off.
This trivia is not without motivation. To generate an energy-saving movement of sorts, Heap is promoting the notion of a black Google, which would save (literally) heaps of energy if it joined the dark side, considering the number of searches it supports. To get the search giant to see the light, users are encouraged to make Blackle their homepage.
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Fallon, London just put together these new spots for Ask.com. They've got that VHS vibe going on and are weird, but oddly watchable. (We liked Algorithm best, probably because of the dancing.)
With the failure of Jeeves and the new face of Ask, characterized by that cryptic billboard campaign, it took us awhile to warm up to the brand's quirky new personality. The ninja effort probably helped.
What we like about the new Ask is that they manage the random humor well but don't go all left-field - all efforts serve the purpose of delivering the same, consistent message in different ways.
Smart. Why is that so hard to do?
Some time ago we got word that Sisley released this racy ad featuring allusions to coke, the unofficial talc of the modeling world.
Later Benetton Group, the parent company, left us a comment stating this work is not formally associated with the Sisley brand. The statement included a push for Sisley's latest campaign featuring Stephanie Seymour, "worldwide recognized as an icon of fashion and beauty."
An image from said campaign is at left. It's so much less racy (and infinitely more creative) than the coke-whore glamazon variation. < /sarcasm >
Inspired by these curious events, MyItThings wrote a post on fakedvertising that pretty much states Sisley (or someone who loves the company enough to throw together some pretty well-made creative) pulled a clever one with this effort.
Way to go.
- Christiania Spirits is hosting a billboard competition. Finalists will be judged on the company's guiding principles known as Purism. OK then.
- A recent ad in the Economist promoting South Korea's Gwangyang as a business center used the Calgary skyline to do so.
- AOL has plans to acquire behavioral ad network Tacoda. The company will use Tacoda's targeting capabilities to improve its advertising offering.
- On the eve of Saatchi's new red pigtail guy commercial, Improv Everywhere is staging a faux protest claiming the ads unfairly represent red heads.
- AdFreak says Microsoft's new Live Derby 2007 game which promotes Live Search doesn't do much more than prove Microsoft is uncool and is still good at crashing.
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Imagine the worst of '80s music, the most transparent of body-builder come-ons and a never-ending infomercial merged into a bikini-sporting ad campaign.
We're not really sure what else to say about these Blue Q spots by Mother, except that they feel a little like a sensory molestation. Or you know that feeling of violation you get when somebody puts a finger in your belly button? More like that.
We would like to try some of that Irish accent breath spray, though.
Hunk and Babe variations here. And we'd be asses if we forgot the Sexy Music Video.
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