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Frito Lay: The Snackie of Choice for Tech Romantics Feed Company sent us some online video magics for Frito-Lay, the good folks that bring you both Sun Chips and beef jerky. (They also own Cracker Jack. Now that's just impressive.) Inspired, wethinks, by their own chip-and-dip combinations, the campaign premise is Made for Each Other. Each painfully adorable video features a piece of technology on that lonely and familiar quest for The One. 2010 Lexus RX is the Stuff of Technological Fancy Team One gave us a "YouTube sneak preview" (wait, what?) of its All-New! 2010 Lexus RX ads. The theme of each is "driver inspired" -- think magical cranes pulling obstacles out of traffic, or an assembly line in your house. All this is to say the Lexus is a perfectly calibrated luxury instrument whose specs revolve around you. Visually interesting and slightly surreal, as per usual. We really liked "Intersection." Sid Lee Staff Engages in Group Doodle To get Canadian co-eds to enter their dearest back-of-the-class freehand sketches into Red Bull's Doodle Art contest, Sid Lee whipped out its own No. 2s and created an ad composed entirely of unretouched print musings. The final result -- which includes work from accounting, tech support, creative and client services -- looks like the emotional lovechild of Napoleon Dynamite and Juno. We want to hug it (especially this little guy) while listening to The Decemberists. Sketches from uni kids will be accepted through February 27th. Locations for "drop boxes" are organized by province. So far, four drawings have been added to the gallery. No ligers have been turned in -- but we're getting pre-ty darn close. Our only complaint is that the images aren't big enough to examine more closely. Sid Lee, please add zoom-in. ALS Weaves Debilitating Maze Through Unwitting Hosts A few years ago we met a farmer who lost his wife to Lou Gehrig's disease. The process was short but painful: it hit her all of a sudden, and took her in a matter of months. He ended up publishing their story under the title When the Music Stopped. When we asked why he chose it, he explained that Lou Gehrig's -- or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) -- functions by depriving you first of the muscles you use most. It spreads rapidly to the rest of your body, and finally ends in death. His wife was a piano player; in her case, things began falling apart when she could no longer play. Imagine it: the slow dismantling of your life, beginning with the loss of your smallest, dearest pleasures. It's a terrible thing to hear, and a worse thing to experience first- or second-hand. That's the crux of "Head and Shoulders," a powerful ad released by the ALS Society of Canada. Put together by Lowe Roche to the playful, active tune of "head and shoulders, knees and toes," it makes you privy to a father and his family as their universe spirals into painful stillness ... along with him. VW Sends Earnest Junk Bond Traders to Rehab As the economy struggles out of the hinterlands of recession and Just General Suckiness, Volkwagen takes advantage of the French's irresistible inclination to remind the world it knew better all along. Witness while a group of compulsive junk bond junkies try ridding themselves of their nasty addiction. Think AA, except with tailored suits instead of flannel. Our favourite is "Exorcist," possibly because purging unregulated capitalism is the closest we'll ever come to watching a businessman give birth: "SUBPRIME! Dol-LARRRRR..." CURB Uses Magic Rainwater Spray to Push Soul in UK Kia's takes its Soul to the streets with help from UK-based CURB, a company whose modus operandi it is to develop nothing but eco-friendly ads. Dirty pavements in London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham will be "spray-cleaned" with the silhouette of a Soul and a link to shapeyoursoul.com, where you can win a soul of your own. (We're trying not to read too deeply into this, especially since we like kicking puppies, carving random initials into young trees and vandalizing any and all likenesses of Regis Philbin.) Tweets Go Black to Protest NZ's 'Guilt Upon Accusation' Law Avatars on Twitter are going ominously black to protest a new law, Section 92A, that's been passed in New Zealand. After the 28th, users can get their Revisionist Historians Add The Watchmen to Man's Timetable Every once in awhile you come across some viral propaganda that's actually pretty neat, actually. (Consider.) Hoping to reignite the sleeping flames of The Watchmen comic series fans, Rubber Republic launched a YouTube channel to populate with retro news stories. Commentary's mostly favourable and views are high: all signs of happy viral life. People seem impatient for more news stories to appear as the public release of The Watchmen draws near. (In theatres March 6, boys and girls.) We're suckers for an elaborate backstory, so this is some pretty cool shit. Hopefully the film will maintain the same fidelity to the spirit of the original comics. Find more goodies -- including a retro game, widgets and all the necessary social network tie-ins -- at thenewfrontiersman.net. One of the videos has also been posted below. Fans of Don Pasquale, Nescafe and the Bellagio: Rejoice! Boy do we have a spot for you. Nescafe's "More Beans, More Taste" features "over one tonne of beans," shooting into the air a la the Bellagio Fountains, to the tune of "Che interminabile audirivieni" from comic opera Don Pasquale. The weird thing is, for something with all that going on, it just kinda falls flat. Maybe it's because watching dancing water isn't that fun in the first place, and is really only marginally so in person. Or maybe it's because it's Nescafe. Real Tax Payers of Genius Don't Squander on Ad Divas. It isn't immediately clear whether the Maryland Comptroller has an ingenious sense of humor or just really low standards, but "Real Tax Payers of Genius" -- a video effort to get taxpayers to e-file -- definitely left us with a queasy "What hath YouTube wrought" sensation. Word from a colleague: "I love how the screen says ifile ... and the voice says efile." But it was the papercut scene, and the digitally-enhanced voiceover, that stole our appetites. We can't hate on something we so deeply pity. So hey, MD, here's some help. (And warm clammy thanks to Jack for molesting us with this audiovisual gem.) 
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