BlackBerry Personifies Personal Assistant with Weird Mascot

We thought the Microsoft Butterfly was kind of nifty. The guy in the BlackBerry suit? Not so much. Giant plush costumes are so deceptive in their frozen state of cheer and rarely work outside Chuck E Cheese and college football fields, where they can be ridiculed at leisure by their own peers.

The requisite BlackBerry Mascot MySpace, as if we care.

Social Meme Mash-Up Makes Art on Big Ball

A cross between a collaborative rubber band ball and a chain letter, this piece of "potential art" has been bouncing through the webosphere, inviting collective creative design for an ever-growing montage.

Drawball zooms into a spot about 1/4096th its size, which is where users can leave their mark. The result isn't just a mishmash of arbitrary graffiti; it includes americana logos like Coca-Cola, new pop culture icons like Digg and representations of various subcultures.

Like Wikipedia.org, the Drawball project proves surprising to some: people left virtually unregulated will work together to build something meaningful, even if the meaning can only be seen in the aggregate.

To witness the evolution of Drawball from beginning to end, check out Drawball Playback, where a year's work of collaborative art unfolds. It's a little like watching the progression of mankind in hyperspeed, as various image colonizations and social eclipses take place over the life of the project.

We wonder if human colonizations are this provocative from a distance. Maybe that's why God never intervenes.

Rubenesque Ruby Hawks Soothing Self Esteem Message

Adhurl brings our attention to Ruby, The Body Shop's attempt to cash in on the real beauty hype. In addition to the pear-shaped doll, the website purveys tips on self-esteem and being an all-around better person instead of just a skinnier one. Because we all know where that path leads.

We dig the idea of perpetuating an equal-opportunity beauty myth. We just don't think chubbier dolls are the answer. When we were kids, this isn't stuff we thought about.

We played with dolls because dolls were awesome. We didn't care if they were Amazonian like the short-lived Maxi or small as Polly Pocket. We didn't even care that most were blonde; once we hit a certain age we cut all the hair off anyway. And forget Barbie for a minute - is anybody checking up on the psychological repurcussions of Glo Worms or Teletubbies?

Burden of Inch Angst Now Shared by Both Sexes

We grow ever nearer to the elusive notion of gender equality. Don't believe us? Now men aren't the only ones breaking a sweat over the measuring tape.

Start your conditioning on the merits of the designer vagina right here. And to think! Just a few years ago the makers of Gattaca thought perfection paranoia would end in pursuit of good health, pretty eyes and sharp minds. The devil is always in the details.

True.com Reveals True Feelings for Demographic

MySpace, True.com's banner whoring stomping-ground, is running an ad that's made us double-take at least six times thus far.

Are they saying men are like dogs? That men should seek out dogs instead of women? That either one of the sexes should go canine and not carnal?

They also appear to be addressing us in pup language. Sit. Stay. Date. Bark? Jump? How high? It didn't occur to us how condescending True can be, not merely in language but in branding, until just now. Is this what we've come to? Docile men, interchangeable sex kittens and one-word commands?

Well, maybe. Despite the lackluster appearance of its website, True destroys competition in the dating world right now. So tonight we've decided to hit a bar and ask members of the opposite sex to wag tails and play dead and see if it gets us laid. There's a whole fetish industry that revolves around collars and commands, so we're feeling optimistic. Thanks, True.

Layers of Denim History Revealed in Storytelling Striptease

We suspect Levi's puts its design cash toward licensing fees for the awesome songs they use in ads that keep us trying, year after year, to find a cool pair of Levi's jeans, even if history tells us this will never happen. Lame denim fits aside, the ads are sensory pop art.

We love -- love -- the Dangerous Liaisons ad for their 2007 line. At first we thought it was the usual booty-call striptease bit, because we've seen that gimmick a thousand times, but as the spot wore on we realized something more interesting happening.

In the Bartle Bogle Hegarty masterpiece, a couple undresses to reveal layers of decades suggested in clothing, demeanour, style and even background noise. It moves fluidly from the rough-and-tumble 19th century workjean years to 2007's waifish verge-of-tears emo period. All to the haunting and playful tune of "Strange Love" by Little Annie Bandez.

Time for another futile trip to the flagship store.

German Ad Makes Words Spit Flames

TJ "I Told You So" Swafford dropped a link to this interesting Audible.de ad in our Soflow group forum this morning. It's a cross-promotion with Eragon in which words flow out of some suspiciously iPod-looking earbuds and smash together, giving phoenix-like birth to a dragon.

The copy reads "Lebendige Worte" or "living words." We're not sure what the narrator is saying but dragon visuals and German-speak have a way of demanding one's strictest attention. We also like the gobbledygook mash-up of disconnected letters that turn into a fire-breathing monster. We shoot for the same type of effect when we throw together scathing diction.

Do we now want to watch Eragon? No, but that's because we were burned by Dragonheart, which ruined live-action dragon films for us forever.

Sirius and XM Merge, MySpace Does Comics, eBay Does TV

- The inevitable has happened. Siruis and XM have merged in a $13 billion deal to become a single satellite radio provider. FCC approval is needed to seal the deal.

- MySpace is launching a comic book site. Seth Cohen would salivate.

- eBay will launch its online TV marketplace in March and will play a role in second quarter scatter.

- BudTV is not having a good time. Attorneys General from 21 states are on the brewer's ass about age verification for access to the service claiming it's too easy for minors to get in.

- Well, hallelujah. DVR owners watch commercials.

- Ooo, ooo, ooo! Leaked email outlines Yahoo's new publishing and advertising structure.

- With Dell Idea Storm, the computer maker is turning to consumers for input on what they'd like to see in future products.

Walking Lightbulbs Promote GoaFest Ad Show

Leo Burnett Mumbai puts AAAI's GoaFest ad festival on the map with a set of Youtube videos personifying ideas that might pop up during the event.

Here are the spots for viral ideas and powerful ideas.

The videos were sent to marketing and creative people in India over a week's time and have since circulated the subcontinent, allegedly launching GoaFest into the worldwide advertising community as India's advertising award show of note.

That's some big talk for a bunch of illuminated heads. We like the notion of encompassing broad concepts in a short tongue-in-cheek clip, and with most they did a great job. Unfortunately we think the humour is lost outside the professional ad world (and maybe that's okay). After sharing a couple of clips with our friends they gave us the "WTF?" face and forced us to sit through another episode of Homestar Runner.

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Hotel Room Hotties Aside, Diesel Takes on Global Warming

Following up on it Heides website takeover, Diesel has introduced its Spring and Summer 2007 fashion line with a new site, promoted by nicely artified electric trolleys, that takes on the theme of global warming. It professes the need to acknowledge global warming but realizes we can't stop our lives because of it and illustrates how we can enjoy laying about a world ravaged by global warming. It also offers up ten tips people can use to minimize global warming which include having sex (it generates heat), insulate your home with recycled denim, never take a shower and eat red meat in a restaurant (it saves on your home refrigeration and ills cows which cause damagaing mathane gases when they fart).

The site also points to stopglobalwarming.org and offers Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth for purchase. Whether or not you think global warming is human-caused or just a natural, cyclical temperature change, this site is nicely done. Afterall, who wants to see the same thing everytime the visit a website?