Adverband Releases First Single For Symantec

Formed in early October by NightAgency, the adverband RockDotRock is now out with their new video that promotes Norton Confidential for the agency's clint Symantec. We're no music expert so we're going to leave this wide open for you readers to comment on. Is this good? Is it bad? Are Adverbands the wave of the futer? Is is marketing gone crazy? Do tell.

Georgia-Pacific Thinks People Care About Wood

This Georgia Pacific site, GPTimeMachine, is designed to show how long the companies products last by providing viewers a virtual time machine through which they can check out a house ten years into the future to see how it's holding up. Nice concept but the execution is extremely goofy and corny. So much so that it actually might be good though we remain undecided on that front.

This is one of those ingredient branding things that always makes us wonder why companies bother doing it. Obviously it must work or else Intel wouldn't still be doing it. Unless your a geek or a detail freak, you likely don't give a crap what sort of chip is inside your computer or what kind of wood is used to build your house. We could see this Georgia Specific thing being targeted at home builders but we'd really like to see what results come from this consumer-focused, ingredient-branding approach Georgia Pacific has taken. Do tell. Numbers please.

Tobacco Company Involvement With YouTube Smoking Videos Pondered

CMM News points to a Sydney Morning Herald article which calls to our attention the odd proliferation of videos on YouTube that show women smoking. Now that wouldn't be so weird except for the fact that in many of the videos, that's all they're doing: glamming on the cam while puffing away seductively. Sydney University School of Public Health Professor Simon Chapman viewed many of the 27,000 smoking-related videos on YouTube and while he acknowledges the videos could simply be an innocent social phenomenon, Chapman also wonders whether it's a clandestine effort by tobacco companies to promote smoking's cool quotient.

While tobacco advertising in America has been severely limited, it's been completely outlawed in Australia since 1992. Whether or not any tobacco company is behind this is likely to remain a mystery. A Philip Morris rep neither confirmed or denied involvement in with the video and said the company adheres to local laws and Internet advertising to minors should be banned. YouTube declined to comment for the story. While we find it hard to believe tobacco companies have any involvement in this and there's plenty of not-so-glamorous smoking videos to back up that belief, stranger things have certainly happened regarding this industry's marketing efforts.

Taser Companies Make CEOs Earn Paychecks Shock-Therapy Style

Inspired by the video of a UCLA student getting repeatedly tased by cops in the school library, which was too sadistic even for us, Ad Freak decided to research how taser companies hawk their wares. What they found was this video depicting Taser execs zapping the shit out of each other to demonstrate a taser's non-lethal but efficiently trauma-inducing capacity. "If only your boss showed this kind of commitment," Ad Freak observes.

We're guessing university cops don't test tasers on themselves before dashing out the door with them in the morning. If they did, they might discover it doesn't quite tickle - though we might consider getting tased ourselves if it means a mind-blowing settlement from UCLA and watching some dumbasses get fired. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Long Lost Hippies Promote World Peace With Global Orgasm

Found! Long lost hippies from the 60's! We always wondered where they all went and now we know. Well, at least we know where two of them went. Donna Sheehan and Paul Reffell are co-founders of the anti-war organization Baring Witness which is all about peace...and nudity...and, well having a gigantic global orgasm. Yes, the two are behind Global Orgasm, an effort that urges the world to have a synchronis orgasm Friday December 22. Apparently, it's all to "effect positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy a Synchronized Global Orgasm."

Cue The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and all those other hippies turned legit activists. OK so a lot of them are dead now for various reasons but you get the idea. It's the return of the hippie. The Internet Hippie. They've discovered they can get their message out to a whole lot more people using the Internet than holding signs, protesting and shouting their beliefs to angry cops. OK, OK, so their not the first cause group to use the Internet but just go with us on this one. So rather than lying to your partner saying, "you rock my world" after you embellish that recent orgasm, now you literally can rock the world by joining this movement. OK, movement is a bad word. Who wants to think about that bodily function when there's a more pleasureable one to be had. Oh wait. Some people like to mix the two. Sorry. To each his own. Have fun.

Videos Urge Exercisers to 'Remain Rigid And Release'

With line-walking gratuitousness and the single statement that sounds like it belongs in a masturbation tutorial, "remain rigid and release," these two promotional videos for Stuff 4 Dudes ever so euphemistically promote the site's offerings, Yoga 4 Dudes and Ballwork 4 Dudes. Sure, they're not the newest thing out there but they offered up FishNChimps, the guy who sent them to us, an enjoyable break from his mission of finding methods to help him achieve his 2007 resolution: weight loss.

Pizza Hut Launches Adopt a Cheesy Bite Campaign

If Madonna adopted a cheesy bite instead of a boy with a father, she might have experienced less resistance and more of the well-being that comes after plucking your newborn adoptee out of its tiny basket and putting it into your mouth.

Adopt a bite if one hasn't already been left clandestinely on your doorstep, but think hard about the commitment you're undertaking. Watch the teenage adoption video first. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Fat Guy Makes Anti-Farmer's Tan Shirt

Okay. We're not really sure what this Kyle Bone dude is doing with the whole anti-shirt thing, but apparently it has to do with a bunch of parachutes falling on his middle-American town.

To clarify, a PR guy sends us the following background on the docu-style campaign:

"Microsoft believes in the power of big ideas, and that there are countless great business ideas all over America, just waiting to happen. With the right tools, they can flourish and maybe even change the world. Microsoft small business account wants to help small businesses by giving away free software and the opportunity to make big ideas into reality."

Hm. Well, the US was the first country in history to include the pursuit of happiness in its ideal of unalienable rights, so whatever. But for the record and for our own pursuit of happiness, or at least snide smugness, we are playing with the idea of creating a "Lame" category in Kyle's honor. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Lux Makes Stop Motion and Soap a Somehow Sexy Combination

Portland-Based Bent Image Lab gets innovative and uses a human face to sex up a stop motion character who goes from sweetheart to siren in this 60-second ad for Lux Provocateur soap and agency Santo Argentina (Spanish version here). Executive Producer Ray Di Carlo explains, "It was just a really good way to solve a problem I see in some stop motion puppets --a lack of soul."

Technical breakthroughs aside, the content is a far cry from Wallace and Grommett. After a forest bath with some black Lux soap the id-operative heroine makes the antlers of deer grow in addition to turning up mustaches on her former village brothers. And what in hell is going on with the whip-wielding gnome-looking thing? - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Breasts Enforce Danish Speed Limits

Apparently those living in Denmark have a care free attitude about a lot of things including speeding so the Danish Road Safety Council thought it was time for a different approach to enforce speed limits. The country now has Speed Control Bikini Bandits. Yes. It's exactly what it sounds like except the Bandits seem to have forgotten to wear their bikini tops when holding speed limit signs and urging drivers to obey the limits. Have fun with this witty campaign approach to speed control but if your boss doesn't like you watching naked women holding speed limit signs while shaking their boobs, you might want to properly angle your monitor before viewing.