We just thought this was funny. And it wasn't that long ago, either.
In April 2004 Garrett French of Web Pro News wrote a post about Google's announcement of GMail - which, in Google's "loose, freewheeling" style, fell just before April Fool's Day.
"How long," French scoffed, "would it take before that ocean of email burst from the Google server farm and sank Washington?"
*Observes moment of silence for nostalgic wave*
Funny how standards can change.
Joining our long list of contextual advertising oddities is this reader-submitted Expedia.com ad residing next to a CNN story about 35,000 American troops receiving deployment notification for late 2007. If the Air Force and the Navy can't get them there, Expedia is, it seems, happy to help.
For years we've made fun of stock photography and the marketers that use it pointing out the pitfalls such as the same models appearing at the same time for different advertisers and the poses that are completely devoid of anything resembling real life but we've never gone so far as to dedicate and entire web page to them.
Now we have "9 things I learned about the world according to anonymous stock photo models." From creepy parents to "curly haired black women 'going moist' for wireless broadband routers" to "People who sit in cramped cubicles answering customer service calls in drab corporate call centers are overjoyed to help fix your DSL modem" to the over representation of African Americans to stupid laptop poses to "Random-ass white dudes should be placed all over your corporate website for no fucking reason," this site cuts through all the crap and tells it like it is. Check it our before you choose your next stock photo
You learn something new every day. For all these years we've been hand cranking our garden hose reel when we could have been lazily watching it neatly crank itself had we purchased a No-Crank Hose Reel. Thanks to the beauty of online video via YouTube, we now know we can be even lazier than we already are.
Now about the actual video that informed us of this wondrous contraption: it's weird. But, we'd expect nothing less from our friends over at Keta Keta who brought us the famed Make Love, Not Terror; Make Love, Not War; Vegas Red; the Israeli Holy Virals; the gay Holy Viral; the Koolanoo pool babe; the James Bond version of the Koolanoo babe; Network2's kinky voyeurism and the Propecia flying pool babe.
This particular video gives us a man who takes gardener out for a very gay day that's supposed to, perhaps, weird us out so much, we'll agree completely with the tagline, "There's a better way to make your gardener happy," and go run out and buy a No-Crank Hose Reel.
We love expansive thinking and chain-of-event style dramas such as NBC's Heroes so it is without surprise we think this newish campaign, Save the Monkeys, for Swedish carbohydrate supplement Gainomax is one of the wittiest we've seen in a long time. Borrowing Heroes' famed premise, "save the cheerleader, save the world," Gainomax, in a hilarious logic-taken-to-the-extreme video called Bananageddon, asks us to "save the monkys, save the world" by drinking Gainomax after exercise instead of eating a banana.
In the Bananageddon, a world without bananas becomes a world without moneys which, in turn, leads to a world full of lice and world leaders who can do nothing expect perpetuate the extinction of all human life...all because we eat bananas. Yes, it sounds very twisted so just watch the video and it will all make perfect sense. Well, sort of.
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Having been accustomed to Got Milk? campaigns that generally just present us with celebrities who can't wipe their mouths, we like the contrast of Hispanic-targeting Toma Leche?, which paints improbable stories about why milk is more relevant to everyday life than it actually may be. (Hey, we're avid milk drinkers here, just sayin').
For example, its tooth-strengthening properties can leverage you in an island where people giggle all day. And in a city where gravity is less rule than inclination, those tough bones certainly do come in handy.
Creative courtesy of RL Public Relations and Marketing.
The guys at left, Adam and Dave, are "Top Emerging Talent" according to Boards magazine. After seeing their Unreel Sports features (sponsored by the zany folk at Fuel TV), we could only shake our heads and wonder to ourselves why nobody else ever came up with pool pool or Segway jousting.
Don't both just seem like things you'd fall into one lame Sunday with your spoiled pothead friend from Tampa?
We're inexplicably enchanted by this strange ad for Toohey's Extra Dry created by BMF, Australia. AdFreak describes it pretty perfectly: "The farmer-hero in the commercial uses a strand of hair from his own greasy pompadour to grow a field of magical corn..." and that's all we can tell you because now you must watch it.
All we can say is, the rockabilly husk-nurturing Aussie farmers make the rock-throwing beer purveyors stateside look damn lazy. Though if it's any consolation, both exhibit a propensity to steal beer from the less fortunate (or just less quick).
And A-B calls beer democratic.
Oh, the fabled office party. That national workplace pass time which accomplishes nothing except to make you look like an idiot in the morning for that thing you did last night which, in the heat of the moment, you thought was funny...but really wasn't. There are countless stories of office parties gone wrong but Metro Gym wants to help. Well, at least with one ass-pect of of the party: toning your ass to perfection so when you place your naked ass on the copy machine, the reaction to the result will be jealously rather than laughter. Metro Gym thinks there's nothing hotter than a tight ass sitting on a copy machine and they promise to help you get that tight ass.
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Chris from Cogbox tells an interesting story about Digg, its users, digital rights management and the power of social media. In a nutshell, a post appeared on Digg referring to a site that has posted the alphanumeric code that would allow someone to break the digital right management system and copy copy-protected DVDs. Digg removed the story after getting over 15,000 Diggs. People rebelled and posted the code in unrelated stories that were then digged to the front page of Digg. Digg admins banned the accounts of those who posted the code. The AACS, the group that enforces the code, sent cease and desist letters to those posting the code. And, hilariously, the letters sent by the AACS contained the actual code which was buried in the URL of one of the sites the organization was trying to silence.
Well, like that poor girl trying to rip her racy picture off the high school bulletin board in a recent Ad Council internet safety campaign, the AACS's efforts are fruitless. Once something like this is out of the bottle, there is simply no way to re-cap it. Nearly every story on the front page of Digg yesterday contained the code despite efforts to stop the spread. Chris has an interesting analysis of this as it relates to social media and the role social media enabling sites like Digg play.
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