RelaxZen, a beverage that promises to both relax and focus you, decided to put itself to the test by sending cases of product to the 192 leaders meeting at the United Nations General Assembly.
RelaxZen is outfitted much like other doomed drinks that came and went in the early 2000s. It has zero calories and sugar, is non-drowsy and provides "100% focused relaxation."
Check out their Open Letter to the UN, which is doing a molassessy circuit of YouTube as we speak. It sports a cheap potshot of Ahmadinejad, which is supposed to be a funny illustration of how some people need to mellow out, but it just came across as feeble and sad.
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Few people are willing to turn a cupcake down; the very word makes us hungry. Knowing we could all use something extra to smile about, Little Debbie's taking one million brand-spankin'-new cupcakes to the streets.
The Little Debbie Share-A-Thon is fortified by an armada of shiny brown Smart cars, laced with the cupcakes' curly ribbon. Chase one down for a free sugar rush. (Or just wait for one to stop.)
Giveaway kicks off on October 18th, National Chocolate Cupcake Day. There's also a sweepstakes where you can actually win one of the shiny new cupcakey Smart Cars. (Watch out for chasers, though. You're gonna get chasers.)
Social media links and the feel-good, slightly quirky TV spots appear below the drop. They speak to the youthful, pursuit-of-happiness quality simmering just under the surface of tired overworked growed-ups. For a second, we actually missed trans fats. HIGH FIVE, Luckie & Co.!
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So yea. Britain's Advertising Standards Authority has received several complaints about a new American Apparel ad in Vice Magazine which features a young girl wearing shorts and a hoodie which, in one shot, almost exposes her nipple. The ASA upheld the complaint dubbing the ad "offensive and irresponsible" as the girl in the ad appeared to be under the age of 16.
According to American Apparel, the girl in the ad is 23 and the ad was meant to depict her relaxed in a "home" environment. But the ANA says the ad is inappropriate and must not appear again in its current form.
Inappropriate? How so? Hasn't everyone heard all girls sit around the house self shooting themselves? Have these complainers never visited a Facebook page? Or Webshots? Or Photobucket? Never seen a mirror shot? This is hardly racy compared to what's out there. Oops, this is an ad. Not some 14 year old boys afternoon "motivation."
OK so yea. Cover a bit more of the boobs and everyone will be fine with this.
Love in the Dumps has the unlikely, and possibly masochistic, ambition of becoming the non-dating site of dating sites. The homepage makes a show of highlighting everything we hate about romantic relations: a section titled Date Dispatch headlines a manifesto on white guys that date Asian girls, Pop Goes the Culture reviews "Hud" 46 years late, and Featured Impersonals showcase various users by antidepressent stats, among other things.
We like the Dr. Damage and Bitch Whispers sections best.
AAAAANYwho, to promote the site, a series of videos are hitting YouTube under the cheerful premise relationship retard. Witness a bunch of for-the-most-part dateable people proclaim, with glee, all the ways in which they'll ruin your life after a couple of months' nesting-time. One will smash you with sarcasm; another vows he'll probably leave you for the neighbour.
If only you could gauge that stuff beforehand. But, given that you can't, might as well admit that you, too, are prone to some retarded relationship shit.
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- Allan Gray graciously exploits the late James Dean.
- Denmark pulls tourism vid that (apparently?) depicts it as slutty.
- Vanksen's second annual Viral Film Festival is now accepting entries. Dust off your amateur vid brainchild, that tops short film you did, or an audiovisual tale whose launch got shafted, and turn it in before October 23rd. The Festival goes down in Paris on November 26th.
- GOOG to open DoubleClick ad exchange to AdWords and AdSense customers.
- Second Life sued by sex toy guy for sex toy knock-offs. Yeah. Virtual ones. We have no idea.
Fresh out of Singapore, and under the catchy slogan "Safe no matter what you make," Play-Doh's launched a series of magazine ads that depict weapons of suburban destruction made out of the claylike substance.
We like it, but only because we've relinquished all ties to the Kingdom of Heaven. On the serious though, the ads are running in at least one alt weekly rag that caters to free-thinking cafe-goers that are okay with this kind of humor without necessarily being god-awful parents.
See variants below the drop.
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Milk's seen a fine trajectory: from nondescript white cereal enhancer to mustache marks on famous faces.
Ladies and gents, we have come a long way from the Dixie Chick days. In partnership with X-Men Origins, Wolverine's whipping out his indestructible talons for the Body By Milk campaign.
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So Wheaties, the wholesome man's man cereal that once sported Michael Jordan on the box, has rebranded to reflect our taurine-powered, chrome-enhanced times.
Powering down on all that orange, the new Wheaties box is Basic Black with a metallic new brand name: FUEL. Just above is a casual (and yet not) assembly of sporty dudes with features that bring both Star Trek and Axe to mind. Yes, simultaneously.
No word on whether the Bom Chika Wah-Wah will be penetrating TV ads; we just hope all that FUEL doesn't manifest itself on unwitting tastebuds.
Make the Logo Bigger has a good assessment of why this approach sucks for cereal. In contrast, Plaid's Brand Flakes for Breakfast admits the box'll stand out -- that is, until all the other breakfasts of champions start following suit.
HBO follows up on the ridiculously-lauded Voyeur campaign with Imagine.
Visually, it's a storytelling mashup of the social cloud and the Mac Cube: a series of stories are told from different perspectives, and you'll need to see all four sides of each to get a complete picture of what's going on.
Production quality is, as always, Home Box Office-caliber. The first one we saw was Art Heist, and it sucked us into its drama-ridden tentacles with a quickness -- once we got the damn site to load. (Small price to pay for good ol'-fashioned passive entertainment.)
Also, doesn't seem to work on Firefox. Fix, somebody, fix!
For those who are into driving and obsessively cataloging their excursions social media style, BFGoodrich has launched Nation of Go. Created by The Martin Agency, the site lets people map and share their travles, upload and geotag photos, connect with professional drivers and all kinds of other driving-related obsessions.
And who knew this comes from a company that makes the most basic and boring of automotive parts, tires.
Hmm. It's kind of like Foursquare for driving enthusiasts, right?
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