GE Plays Leapfrog, We Like Where It's Going

This new leapfrog ad by GE uses playful animation to marry love of innovation to harmony with the natural world. We think the frog, which echoes the adorable Geico gecko, is a little scrawny for all that hardcore hopping but we like the ad anyway.

Turbo Tax Does Tax Rap With Vanilla Ice

Sort of along the lines of logic (or complete and purposeful lack there of) that resulted in Robert Goulet appearing in an Emerald Nuts Super Bowl commercial, Intuit has tapped Vanilla Ice (where the hell has he been all these years?) to front a Tax Wrap promotion for Turbo Tax. The promotion offers $25,000 to the person who makes the best homemade rap demo about taxes. So far, there aren't too many submissions and they are all embarrassingly horrible. We really don't know what to do with this one. Trash it for its use of a has-been to get all jiggy with one of the most financially serious periods in a person's life or praise it for its brilliant quirkiness and kitschy badness.

STA Borrows Globe Idea, We Shake Heads in Righteous Disgust

No idea's original, but in any field the taboo is the same: if even a successful idea can be traced back to somebody else's sleeper hit, fingers get pointed. For a shining example, just look at Suzuki's attempts to be BMW.

A source tells us elements of the STA World Traveler Contest are suspiciously similar to an existing campaign that's lesser-known but more complete in scope. St. Georges School in the Grenada West Indies used the same pinpricked-globe format to highlight, not starry-eyed co-eds, but far-flung alumni they've accumulated over 30 years. Visit the St. Georges website and click on the 30 year anniversary logo at bottom left to catch the similarities.

If you don't feel like clicking back and forth, that's okay; we'll show you.

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Obama Launches Social Networking Site

It's not the first time a political candidate will have used social networking as part of a campaign strategy, but it's probably the first time a political candidate has ever created his or her own social networking site.

Enter My Barack Obama, a social networking space dedicated to users who'd like to help Obama get into the White House in '08. He also has a MySpace that's of course not made or endorsed by him but by some very serious fan out there who happens to have little to do but make thousands of friends on his behalf.

There's not too much you can say to trash a guy who acknowledges his own lack of qualifications and admits to doing drugs in college. But we've all seen how internet influence can make or break you. A word of warning, Obama: remember Howard Dean.

Jeep and Marvel Fight Crime, Draw Pictures for Patriot

To promote the Patriot, Jeep gets cozy with Marvel Comics and their built-in audience of former geeks, geeks-in-training, pop aficionados, and mutants like us (we turn everything we touch into AWESOME).

The campaign site includes a progressive comic-drawn adventure scrawled by Bing Cansino. Users can input their own storylines as the tale progresses. The winning tale gets penned by Cansino and may result in an autographed original page sketch.

Yeah, it's consumer-gen. Again. But it's way better than Jeep Compass and that strange bobble-head/karaoke stuff.

Real Estate Firm Puts 'Felicity' in Luxury Loft, Slaps it On Youtube

To promote its Donovan homes, Cressey Development Group launches Donovan Life, a well-produced but rather poorly-acted lifestyle series "about young urban professionals full of energy and ambition who are looking for a comfortable environment to enjoy the best the city has to offer," explains director Roger Evan Larry. The films are produced by his film and TV production company, Relevision.

The idea's a good strategy for getting people thinking inside the space. Who wouldn't want to own the apartments inhabited by the cast members of Friends?

Unfortunately this isn't Friends, or Felicity, or Will and Grace, or Sex and the City or anything else it's shooting for. But the series is shooting for pilot status, so maybe that will change and another ditsy but happy-go-lucky city ingenue will have her moment in the spotlight. Should the producers succeed in this noble quest, it'll be an awesome first for real estate marketing.

Check out an episode of Donovan Life here.

2 Hormonal Co-Eds + 4 Countries = STA World Traveler Contest

It's become part of the 20-something cliche to leave college and see the world. That's why we think the STA Travel 193 campaign by Night Agency is doing so well. Upon the contest's end a winner will be selected to become a "world traveler" over a two-person trip to four countries.

The campaign features a little Flash globe with clickable videos where you can watch people talk about their experiences in a given country. It's a little like being back in college again, watching those EAP kids give speeches about how their lives have changed forever post beer-chug in Munich.

With next to no media money spent this invitation has garnered over 6000 leads for STA in its first week. Now how can we possibly have an immigration problem when everybody's just raring to leave?

MySpace Destroys Dreams, Erodes Need for Reunions

Lynette Web points us to a study that finds most teens are in a social network (duh) but also finds that the prevalence of social networks may devalue longtime humiliating (or triumphant) traditions like reunions for those way past teenhood.

"For instance, we recently talked about having our five-year class reunion, and I found that most of the people I asked said they really had no reason to get together in five years because they used sites like MySpace and Facebook to stay in touch with anyone they really wanted to keep up with, anyway," says Sam Ford of Convergence Culture.

That's disappointing. What have we been working so hard for if in the next five years we can't show our former nemeses how awesome we still look, then act really sweet and invite them (and their six screaming babies) to sit next to us? We have officially lost our will to go on. MySpace, you destroy everything you touch.

Weird Outer Space Bug Game Used to Promote Eclipse Gum

Candystand concocts yet another diversion called Eclipse Polarity, an odd cross between a space and a jungle game where you shoot at mechanical bug-looking things before they shoot you first. Careful, they can shoot in diagonals too.

We've died several times in our generous attempt to test it for you and we have to say ping pong remains our favourite out of all the games Candystand has sent us in its effort to sway us from our divine ad-trashing mission. So if you want to try Eclipse Polarity, godspeed. If not, we'll see you at the ping pong table.

Sex Tape Yields Yet Another Non-Celeb

Apparently a sex tape phase is something you go through when you become Paris Hilton's latest elbow buddy. And while we thought Paris was genuinely pissed when her sex tape found its way into public hands, we have trouble believing the same about Kim Kardashian, whose non-career can only improve by proof of coitus with co-star Ray J, who himself is really only famous by association to sister Brandy.

A spokesperson for Kim says she's been caught "completely off-guard" by the forced release, and he vigilantly promises she'll take legal action. After seeing the stylized images and the way she plays up the camera on the badly-named Kim K Superstar, it's easy to imagine she probably prepped for the role in front of her bedroom mirror months in advance. Half-conscious gropes in the dark these ain't.

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