Drunken Santa Needs Help With Packages

While we absolutely can not play this game, we thought there'd be a few of you out there that could. Norfolk-based interactive agency Drew Media has created The Incident before Christmas, an online game where players help a drunk Santa pick up all the packages he's dropped due to his altered state of mind. Perhaps those of you with faster fingers will fare better than we.

Agency Holiday Card Stays On Message

Here's a beautifully simple holiday card from Connecticut-based agency Adams & Knight. Rather than go the goofy, silly, humorous route (not that that's all bad), the agency chose to highlight what the shop actually does: make advertising.

Agency Uses Foot to Promote Branding Service

Here's something you don't see all the time. To promote its branding service Gulp & Go, PR agency Antonia created a video that likens its approach to branding to, well, a foot. Oddly, it all makes a convincing argument.

Australian Agency's Christmas Card Lectures Clients

Spoofing its own "UnAustralian" ad featuring Sam Kekovich, BMF Australia, in its Christmas card, tells advertisers to "increase the size of your budgets, decrease the size of your Legos logos, make better ads and make sure you put me in them." While we have no idea what the Legos (note, he said Legos, not Lego), reference means, Kekovich says he's sick of watching bad advertising such as singing families in breakfast commercials and women having orgasms to sell shampoo and says "you don't have to make ads dull enough to sedate hyperactive Australian Idol contestants just to sell your products."

To explain the power of good advertising, Kekovich tells marketers, "Take my lamb ad. it won loads of awards and sold shitloads of lamb." And to those in charge of business, Kekovich says, "the research-driven, penny-pinching, logo-loving CEOs out there may disagree with me but they can get stuffed." Such a delightful, however very true, holiday greeting. Give it a watch.

Publicis Says Shoot the Elves

From Publicis Copenhagen comes this little Christmas time-waster. It's a game where, in order to stop the elves from distracting busy agency workers, you shoot the elves with snowballs while avoiding shooting the employees. Actually, it's a good mental release for anyone who's sick of their boss going to all the Holiday parties while they have to stay strapped to their cube pumping out work for which their boss will take credit. Shoot away.

News Flash: Alex Bogusky Has No Hair!

A new online campaign for the Jennifer Anniston, Kevin Coster movie Rumor Has It has played sweetly into our fluff and puffery-filled world of journalistic nonsense. Online marketing firm Pod Digital Design has created RumorMaker, a site that lets visitors create their own front page tabloid scandal about a friend complete with photograph and snarkish commentary. If there's no photo or snark available, visitors can choose from several provided choices. We couldn't resist temptation and had a bit of fun with Alex Bogusky and his hair.

There Is Most Certainly Life After the :30

During the bathroom breaks and :30 coffee breaks we are allowed here at Adrants headquarters, we have finally finished Joe Jaffe's book Life After the 30-Second Spot. Actually, we finished it about two weeks ago but, again, we aren't allowed much time here to do anything serious what with all the stunt marketing and cleavage out there that had to be given our journalistic excellence. So, finally, we've found a few moments to hide from the Adrants Overlords to reflect on Jaffe's book and share our thoughts with you.

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Online Video Growth Stunted by Old School :30 Mindset

Following his trip the the recent iMediSummit, Underscore Marketing President Tom Hespos is voicing his frustration with the advertising industry's continued cling to the television nipple. Concerned that many new online video advertising opportunities will amount to "shovelware TV," Hespos reports many industry execs are pleased as punch with the status quo, happy to unnecessarily pay middlemen to serve their precious TV spots and offended at the notion online video should be any different than a :30 spot.

Agency Holiday Card Offers Practical Information

Toronto-based iStudio has created a Holiday card that offers far more than a bit of humor and wit. iStudio has developed a "card" with 12 parts following the 12 days of Christmas advent calendar tradition. Each business day, a new part is revealed. Each part contains indepth information on particular topics which range from shopping to travel to Christmas cocktails to music to baking and more. The "card" also has an RSS feed to subscribers can be notified when each new day's topic has been posted. It's a nice idea and had we not seen it, we'd never know about the Candy Cane Martini.

Agency Christmas Card Horrifies 'A Christmas Story'

In an era when fruit baskets and fancy boxed trinkets don't cut it anymore, agency Christmas cards continue to get more and more elaborate and this years card from Via is no exception. The agency did a video remix of holiday favorite, A Christmas Story, creating a movie trailer called A Christmas Gory. If anything, it proves there's no such thing as reality, only what happens in the editing suite. To invite people to the "card," the agency created a box like the one in the movie, stuffed it with wood shavings and a certificate pointing to the site.

The site also has buddy icons, desktop wallpaper, t-shirt and stuff through CafePress and an inspirational nod to a remix of The Shining. Acknowledging the world domination of the iPod, the agency also offers the remixed video in video iPod size. We hope all the rest of you agencies send your cards too. Maybe we'll have some sort of contest to see which agency's is the best.