Dog Disappears, Grey's Blog Disappears, HHCC's Reappears

- In this new Venables, Bell & Partners-created commercial for Audi, a house gets a time-based makeover and so does the dog.

-Apparently, Grey SF is inexplicably no longer blogging.

- But Hill Holiday's blog, one of the earliest agency blogs, is active again after a few layers of dust settled.

- Google has launched do it yourself display advertising.

- Today's Jeopardy will feature a category dedicated solely to the AMC show Mad Men.

Racetrack Screensavers!

Oh, the things you can do when your boss is away. Some kids at Dm9ddb/Brasil set their screensavers up to look like corresponding pieces of the same race track.

It actually turned out pretty nifty. You know that feeling you get when you create a successful domino effect? You're both impressed and slightly surprised, right? That's what this was like.

The objective was to disseminate the game Virtual Global Race (or was it just to promote Intel? I can't really tell). The screen savers took a month -- and 20 people -- to perfect. See making-of.

BB Plugs Celebs, Droga5 Bags Method, Mountain Dew Abbreviated, Frequent Hooker Miles

- Among its minions, BlackBerry brags about celebu-users. How very AmEx. (Props to Adrants reader Atif for this.)

- Droga5 becomes agency of record for method! Kick-ass.

- The McCain campaign asked YouTube to stop taking down its campaign videos. (The videos purportedly violate copyright because many contain snippets of music that the campaign did not have permission to use.) And YouTube was all, "Bitch, please." What, McCain? You're all for Joe Plumber but can't pay licensing fees?

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Digital Dives, Pessimism Pervades, Parker Prowls, Brand Gene Discovered

- David Armano has mapped the Agency Path to Enlightenment. From Cannes to creativity, it's all there.

- The economy's nosedive is taking a bite out of "experimental" media such as virtual worlds, mobile and widgets according to the Wall Street Journal.

- Economic negativity is now running rampant in advertising. Come on, people. A little "glass half full" optimism can't really be a bad thing, can it?

- George Parker is on a mission so save WPP by...um...buying it?

- McKinney has emerged triumphant from the agency smack down for the Sherein-Williams account.

- Repower America has sparked a heated debate on YouTube with its commercialhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmEUHeI7fzE urging us to break oils lock on government.

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Hatch Award Video Brings Clarity to Clutter 3.0

We didn't make it to Boston's Hatch Awards this year and therefore we missed this hilarious introductory video created by Fort Franklin. In the video, we see the desktop of a creative seemingly hard at work developing the voiceover for the Hatch video itself.

All seems to go well until the desktop explodes with activity not far from the reality we all experience everyday as we try to work on one thing while endless distractions such as email, IM, stupid YouTube videos, Skype, iTunes updates and stupid pictures begin to bounce incessantly along the bottom of the desktop making actual work impossible. Revision after revision fails.

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CosmoGirl Closes, DraftFCB Gets Advice, Google Greens

- Hearst Magazines will close CosmoGirl with the December issue. It first published in 1999.

- CBS has schedule the annual Victoria's ecret Fashon Show to air December 3 at 10PM. It wil take place at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel.

- As only George Parker can, DraftFCB gets some sage advice concerning its penchant for repeatedly tooting its own horn.

- The Ladders takes a unique approach to illustrating the attractiveness of its $100K talent pool.

- Google does the green thing with project 10 to the 100th.

- Citizens Bank customers get happy together karaoke-style. It's bad. Really bad.

- TAMBA is out with Granny Bash Bingo, a game in which granny deflects attacks from a bingo machine which has had enough from its grey haired oppressors.

Gyro Published, BMW Winds, Diddy Dissed

- For some politically-themed contextual fuckery, check this out.

- In the new book, Virus: The Outrageous History of Gyro Worldwide, French theorist and Author, Harriet Bernard-Levy chronicles the birth of the agency and its founder, Steven Grasse.

- Rubber Republic is seeding a game for the Aardman's 'Creature Discomforts' series made for the Leonard Cheshire Disability Charity. The first features Callum, a blind chameleon that needs your help getting his dinner.

- Oh look, it's another twisty road commercial for BMW. OK, it's not exactly a road but still. GSD&M Idea City created.

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'He Wants to Overturn Roe vs. Wade.' MAVERICK!

"We just keep saying 'Maverick, Maverick, Maverick' until that's all they hear!" snaps a fictional McCain campaign strategist. "It's not that hard." Because why write a jingle when you've got a word with the force of a heavy blunt instrument -- a word voters will remember long after all the other propaganda's melted together?

Dubbed "A Fly on the Wall," this :33 bit of masterpiece theatre was allegedly funded by Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein in the flesh, then uploaded onto YouTube from their own computers. Well, maybe not the latter.

Not the first "maverick" bitchslap we've seen in recent days. I'm just glad they didn't use children.

More where that came from, and good stuff too, though all this blatant Obama-loving has begun alienating some potential voters.

KFC Craves, Smirnoff Mixes, CPB Rolled, Kiplingers Tours

- In a bid to woo former CP+B client Pearl Izumi, Boulder agency Karsh/Hagan launched a poster campaign slamming agencies that drop smaller clients for bigger ones.

- With "silent" ad, KFC offers $20,000 to the United Nations World Food Program if presidential candidates address the issue of world hunger during the debate Tuesday in Nashville.

- Smirnoff is out with a new commercial which has two trapeze artists making a drink in mid air while performing at the circus.

- Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine has joined the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors Consumer Education Foundation and TD AMERITRADE Institutional to launch the Your Money Bus Tour.

Brandstalkers Proclaim Label Love on the Torsos of Young Bucks

A guy called James Neate just created a crew, Brandstalkers, whose mission it is to "virally" promote brands it loves -- as opposed to advertising them in conventional ways. (Frankly, "viral" is getting pretty conventional, in use of name if not in outcome. Repeat after me: VIRAL IS AN OUTCOME.) In return, the group takes a small "grant" from the companies it represents.

Its debut effort was for Guzman y Gomez, a Mexican taqueria based in Sydney. It involves half-naked guys and a lot of Sharpies.

Gotta love brand gospel writ on flesh. You can probably gauge the success of the campaign by the number of Japanese tourists it attracted.