Watch Around Water Asks 'Where Is Your Child?' with Fake Dead People

Australia's Watch Around Water is placing images of a little drowned boy at the bottom of swimming pools.

At some point we figure people are going to catch onto this whole fake-dead-people-as-props trend, and when they do they'll come across some real dead people and scoff. Then what are we going to do? Say "I'm sorry"?

No. The boy who cried wolf did that. Nobody believed him. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Campus Bicycle Rides, Facebook Group Promote Credit Card

Pop quiz: What gets 29,000 college students to sign up for a credit card company's loyalty program in a four week period? Free bicycle rides around campus. That's right. Working with Trashtalk! Outdoor (gotta love that name), financial institution Chase placed branded bicycles on 17 college campuses and offered students rides from 9A to 3P while urging them to sign up for a Facebook group where they could enroll in Chase's credit card loyalty program. Now that's way more fun than getting handed a boring flyer while passing by the student union, right?

Tide Moves Outside Laundry Aisle

Tide demonstrates how white it is by marketing in the milk aisle. Very clever. Whether it's effective is another story. There's something weird about picking up a box of powdery white soap when you're in milk mode. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

'Turistas Go Home' May be Underhanded Anthem

Here's an interesting ad for the film Turistas which comes out December 1. So soon after the other anti-tourist film Hostel, we're guessing there's a growing distaste for obnoxious half-naked co-eds traveling the world. The billboard's mild urban terrorist style is also disturbingly appealing. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Pizza Hut Launches Adopt a Cheesy Bite Campaign

If Madonna adopted a cheesy bite instead of a boy with a father, she might have experienced less resistance and more of the well-being that comes after plucking your newborn adoptee out of its tiny basket and putting it into your mouth.

Adopt a bite if one hasn't already been left clandestinely on your doorstep, but think hard about the commitment you're undertaking. Watch the teenage adoption video first. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Condo Community Put Dummies Where People Should Be

To promote their snazzy condo complex in Atlanta, Eon at Lindbergh set mannequins up throughout the community - behind registry counters, at clubs or in imposing formation on open lawns.

The campaign is called Bring Lindbergh to Life and the idea is to inspire people to invest their own living breathing bodies in the Lindbergh community. We dig. We also find mannequins jarring when they're outside of stores and staring lifelessly at you from across a cafe table. Must be tough making conversation with a chick that's more plastic than usual. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Charmin Celebrates Number Two With Manhattan Toilet Promotion

Oh how we couldn't pass on highlighting this headline from AdPulp: Charmin Lets You Squeeze One Out in Times Square. Yes, it's all part of Charmin's cutesy bear campaign that promotes a 20-stall Charmin-branded public restroom to be placed at 1540 Broadway in New York between November 20 and December 31. To promote the toilet, there will be Charmin representatives dressed as toilets (yes, you read that right) who will hand out fliers promoting the restroom's locations.

Ambient Ads Everywhere, No One Sees Them

We do enjoy all the inventive ambient campaigns that spring up in Europe all the time but one thing concerns us. Does anyone ever see these things? Every time we are sent a photo of the latest creation or we see it on another site, 100 percent of the time there's never more than one or two people in the vicinity of the thing. Perhaps all the photos are early morning/late day staged photos. Perhaps they're just wishful thinking with help from Photoshop. Either way, one would think the agencies behind these things would at least go to the trouble of creating the illusion or capturing the actual reality that more than one person sees these things. Someone please enlighten us.

UPDATE: Anthony from Saatchi & Saaatchi, the agency that created the campaign, gives us out answer, writing, "I work at Saatchi & Saatchi Simko in Switzerland and I worked on the project... so here is my answer: Yes this was really produced and placed in several places in Geneva. Yes people did see those and the impact and feedback from the public is great . The reason why there is not a lot of persons on the pictures is that we shot those early morning right after when it was placed."

Starbucks Tests WOM & Viral Campaign with Cheer Pass

Starbucks kicks off the holidays Pay it Forward-style by disseminating cheer on chilly city streets. Baristas hand out movie tickets and other small gifts on the condition that the recipient has to do something nice for someone else.

The campaign includes a "cheer pass" that tracks how far the "chain of cheer" has gone. Participants are encouraged to visit It's Red Again to share holiday stories and create greetings. The site is hosted by an awkward-looking man who personifies Starbucks' quirky intellectual vibe. It's also ridden with clever recommendations about holiday coffee blends and seasonal cakes.

CEO Jim Donald says they're interested in the qualitative results of the campaign and admits there aren't any of the usual tracking methods attached to it. (It begs the question - how often does anybody really track anything?) We look forward to seeing how many chains get generated. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Marketing Breaks New Ground ... on Little Tissues

AdPack USA is spreading the word about putting your brand name on those little tissues moms keep in their purses for lick-and-remove jobs when kids' faces get too dirty.

The site includes a video tutorial on how tissues work, explanations on how they can be used (as in-store promo items or giveaways - go figure, we'd totally forgotten what SWAG was for) and little clips about how other companies moved mountains by deciding to jump aboard the tissue train.

And not content to settle merely for the plain-Jane facial tissue niche, AdPack has a tissue for every company. They also do towelettes and wet naps. This would have been a great fit for the Happy Feet and Tamiflu promotion.

Steve Jacobs, president at AdPack USA, says "Although tissue products are low-tech, they are effective and targeted and measurable." While he may be right, it's just funny within the context of a product you can blow holes through. - Contributed by Angela Natividad