David's post below suggests the attitude of Palestinians towards the United States can hardly be changed by advertising. And focus groups conducted in other Arab countries reveal the same thing.

Charney Research conducted focus groups among college educated people in Egypt, Morocco, and Indonesia. Their findings reveal that many Arabs hate America--but they have some very one-sided, and sometimes ridiculously false, ideas about the American people and its government.

It's the focus of my new column on Talent Zoo.

Preconceived notions can't be changed very easily--in international relations, or consumer advertising.

Some dweebs are upset that Jib Jab "sold out" to Budweiser. Brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, famous for their "This Land" election-year animation, take a somewhat defensive posture (which is understandable, but in my opinion unnecessary) as they attempt to explain they've always been, and will continue to be, a commercial operation.

In the middle of the election madness of 2004, when my brother and I were scrambling to deal with crashing web servers and tens of thousands of incoming emails, we got an interesting phone call. The Budweiser brand team wanted to fly out from St. Louis to meet with us.

We were psyched. Budweiser is the reason a good portion of the world watches the Superbowl! The King of Beers is hands down the king of comedic advertising and, if you are going to be in the ad business, which we’ve always been, Budweiser is a dream client.

A couple of weeks after the phone call, a black Suburban pulled up to our office and out popped the top marketing execs for Anheuser-Busch. There were so many of them that we couldn’t fit them in our tiny little office. Instead, we held the meeting in the lobby area.

They wanted to hire us to produce Budweiser spots for the web and promised us the creative freedom to “do our thing”. To test that promise, we asked for permission to JibJab-ize our all time favorite marketing mascots, Frankie and Louie, the Budweiser lizards. When they gave us the green light, we knew they were serious.

Common Dreams reports on the torching of a KFC in Pakistan.

Six people were burnt alive when a mob protesting a suicide bombing of a mosque torched an outlet of an American fast food chain in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

Police and firemen recovered the bodies of six Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) employees after an angry mob set the restaurant on fire late Monday following a suicide attack on a Shiite Muslim mosque here that left five people dead.

I don't know what KFC has to do with any of this, but it does tell us something about how powerful our branded symbols are. To us, KFC seems benign, even friendly. The iconic Col. Sanders seems like a good guy. Not so, in another-- openly hostile to our ways--culture.

Copy: Small but tough. Polo.

Print work from DDB London.

Thanks to Hidden Persuader for the image.

From BBDO Minneapolis and Lincoln, NE design house, Archrival, comes SPAM Singles, a site so powerful in its persuasive arguments, it may even get you to eat SPAM. Here's an example:

1. Where can I keep my SPAM Singles when I'm not eating them?

There is no right answer here. SPAM Singles are like snowflakes, and each will have it's own special place in our hearts. Try a bookshelf, or in your pocket, or behind the TV, or even under your pillow. If you are not sure, stare intently at your SPAM Single. Eventually, through positive mind actualization properties, you will know where to put it.

8. I didn't know that SPAM came in single slices. What should I do now?

Remain calm. That's the most important thing. Secondly, use the power of your brain and imagine how your life will be changed. Go easy at first, because this is a delicate matter that could easily blow your mind. If you need to relax, make a sandwich. A SPAM sandwich!

from New York Times: On broadcast television, the live-concert show "Pepsi Smash" drew only a modest audience, but Yahoo is betting that putting the program online will be a boon to its digital music offerings.

Yahoo plans to introduce a section of its Web site housing a redesigned version of "Smash," which as a program on the WB network attracted an average of just 1.3 million viewers in eight episodes last summer. Yahoo and Pepsi are reviving the show as a collection of video segments on the Web, with plans to serve up digital streams of live performances from Coldplay, Kanye West and Gwen Stefani, along with new clips designed for short-attention-span online viewing.

Yahoo will supervise production of the segments and promote the "Smash" series throughout its Web site, hoping that it will help Yahoo maintain an edge in the crowded field of digital music services, which includes rivals like America Online, Microsoft and Viacom's MTV.

The move comes as Yahoo is trying to draw customers to its new subscription-based music service and Pepsi is increasing its footprint online. David A. Burwick, senior vice president and the chief marketing officer for Pepsi-Cola North America, said, "That's where young consumers spend their time."

Steve Rubel reports on a new documentary on blogs and bloggers. Steve will be appearing in the film, as will B.L. Ochman, Zeldman, Scoble, Rebecca Blood, Evan Williams, Jessa Crispin, Elizabeth Spiers, Lessig and many other blogging notables. The film is also looking for a corporate sponsor.

There's already another documentary about blogs in circulation, but hey, one's never enough.

from New York Times: Clients, facing relentless competition and consolidation in categories like automobiles, fast food and telecommunications, are anxiously squeezing every nickel of waste from their ad budgets.

"In the 80's, we used to fight with clients over creative. In the 90's, it was about strategy. Now, it's only about money," said Jonathan Bond, co-chairman of Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners in New York.

So in a trend-conscious industry, economizing is the new black. For instance, when Kirshenbaum Bond recently filmed a commercial for the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, retelling the tale of the Trojan horse, "instead of building a massive set, we used miniatures," said Rob Feakins, vice chairman and executive creative director.

That saved about $150,000, or about 10 percent of the budget for the commercial, he estimated.

Ernie Schenck is not impressed by Carl's Jr., nor GoDaddy. Pointing to their "sex sells" approaches, Ernie says the tactics are, "a weak-minded crutch that lame clients like Carl's Jr and GoDaddy and a thousand others invariably fall back on in a sad attempt to get noticed." He goes even further in his comments section.

Ever since I've been in this business, there's been creatively horrific crap that's proven to be groinnumbingly successful, yea though it has never gotten within a whisker of a One Show pencil. Their numbers are legion. Everything from Mr. Whipple to the Aflac duck to those freakin leprechauns in the new Foxwoods spots. And, of course, GoDaddy and now Carl's Jr and Paris.

It's always been so and it will always be so. But this is one of those choices that I think we as advertising people have to make. If all we want to do is cater to the crudest nature of society, if we believe all we are is a reflection of that society, then by all means, Carl's Jr is on the frequency and the rest of us are nothing more than a bunch of sniffling, whining, little Don Quixotes in black clothes.

But if you feel, on the other hand, that even the likes of us can play a part in elevating society, or at least in keeping it from sinking all the way to the bottom of the cultural food chain, then don't we have some obligation to not give in to those crude natures?

I've talked in the past about Creative No Fly Zones. Places we just should not go. I know that Linda Kaplan Thaler knows what people want. So do I. And if Linda wants to give it to them, fine. But me? Not a snowball's chance in hell.

from CNN Money: Christopher Nelson's new job, which comes with a $100,000 salary and a one-year contract, will be to watch reruns of "The Dukes of Hazzard" weeknights on the Country Music Television cable channel and write blog postings for the network's Web site.

Nelson applied for the job along with almost 2,000 others in late February, shortly after an ad for the position was placed in several communication industry publications.

For his application, Nelson created a fictional character, called Slick, and a Web site to support Slick's candidacy for the position, slickforvp.org.

The site featured the mustachioed Slick (the clean-shaven Nelson dressed in a black Western-style outfit with fake mustache) standing in front of private jet digitally "painted" to resemble the General Lee.

Slickforvp.org also laid out Slick's positions on a number of social issues. Most of the planks in Slick's "campaign platform" could be considered offensive to a significant number of people, so we'll just share one... "Legalize prostitution as long as it's in an RV..." and leave it at that.

"Slick just got me in the door," said Nelson. "Then I had to close the door."

Before spending the $100,000 in salary, plus various other related costs, the most expensive promotion CMT had ever done for any show was the "Wizmark" talking urinal cake promotion for the network's "Outlaws" series.

Another ad agency is using the sheep metaphor for self-promotion purposes. And not just any old agency, one of the best in the world.

John January what say you about this development?

Yahoo recently released their guidelines for personal blogging by their employees. Surprisingly, they are very clear, concise, forward thinking, and helpful.

The document is broken into two sections, Legal Parameters and Best Practice Guidelines, and is mostly common sense. The basic premise is to be intelligent about your posts, be mindful of your legal obligations and coworkers, make sure your facts are accurate, and if a topic generates outside media coverage, don't be afraid to get Yahoo PR involved to help you out.

It is a great starting point for any company looking to develop corporate blogging guidelines and for your convenience, we've provided a quick download for you:
Download PDF

White Castle is letting go of its butler in a charitable auction on eBay.

Like the butler in our latest television commercial? He could be yours. We're placing “Jeeves” on the auction block to help in the fight against hunger. Proceeds to benefit America’s Second Harvest - The Nation's Food Bank Network. This unique and one of a kind, beautifully crafted and hand painted wooden butler stands 32” tall and is ready, willing and able to serve you. Highest bidder not only gets Jeeves, but other goodies including 52 Crave Case coupons, good for one free Crave Case per week for an entire year.*** In total, they are worth almost $750 in value. Feed yourself, and others. Place your bid for Jeeves today. For more information, visit secondharvest.org.

I like what Crunch is doing with its web site. They're providing community bulletin boards for Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, NYC, LA and Chicago. One of the categories is "Workout Partners," which make a lot of sense, but they extend beyond that to include jobs, housing, events, personals, etc. It's no Craig's List, but it doesn't need to meet that standard. From a branding perspective, this is a great way for Crunch to build a collaborative community, something the actual gyms also offer.

p.s. Crunch, long known for its out-of-the-box ads, places some of this work (like the ad above) on their Downloads page.

USA Today reports that BK is tentatively planning the launch this summer of a spicy, 4-inch-long, fried white-meat chicken snack that looks like a cross between a chicken strip and french fry.

"For me, they're like M&Ms," says Greg Brenneman, CEO of Burger King.

Pittsburgh agency, Blattner Brunner has acquired Sawyer Riley Compton, one of Atlanta's more well known creative shops.

According to Adweek, SRC was down to but 15 staffers and $20 million in billings (a great per employee billings ratio).

SRC is Blattner Brunner's second acquisition in as many years. The shop acquired MHI in Washington, D.C., in September 2003.

from Detroit Free Press: A conservative Christian group launched a boycott against Ford Motor Co., saying the second-largest U.S. automaker has given thousands of dollars to gay rights groups, offers benefits to same-sex couples and actively recruits gay employees.

"From redefining family to include homosexual marriage, to giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to support homosexual groups and their agenda, to forcing managers to attend diversity training on how to promote the acceptance of homosexuality... Ford leads the way," American Family Association chairman Donald Wildmon said in a statement.

Tupelo, Miss.-based AFA said it e-mailed an announcement about the Ford boycott to 2.2 million supporters. AFA special projects director Randy Sharp said nearly 55,000 people had signed a pledge supporting the boycott by Tuesday afternoon.

Sharp is upset by Ford's marketing tactics in gay-oriented publications, including offering to donate $1,000 to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for every Jaguar or Land Rover sold.

from CNET: Apple Computer plans to announce Monday that it's scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel's microprocessors, CNET News.com has learned.

Apple has used IBM's PowerPC processors since 1994, but will begin a phased transition to Intel's chips, sources familiar with the situation said. Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.

The announcement is expected Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech. The conference would be an appropriate venue: Changing the chips would require programmers to rewrite their software to take full advantage of the new processor.

Here's another entry in the dinosaur chronicles. According to the New York Times, many newspaper execs are totally clueless about where their classified revenue is going.

Surprisingly, the momentum of this online alternative with virtually free offerings had not drawn much attention as recently as last fall, when Creative Intelligence, a consulting firm based in Altamonte Springs, Fla., surveyed the newspaper industry. It discovered that many executives were unaware of the arrival of Craigslist in their own cities. Nor were all aware that aside from a sliver, ads on Craigslist were available free.

According to CNN, Citigroup is reporting the loss of personal info on almost 4 million credit card customers--the largest single incident of identity theft yet.

UPS lost a package of data tapes in transit from Citigroup to Experian, a credit-reporting agency. The tapes contained "Social Security numbers, names, account history and loan information about retail customers, and former customers, in the United States."

Identity theft is becoming a regular occurance. And with more marketers feverishly turning to credit organizations and other companies to get personal information on customers to improve their ROI and their CRM and other CYA-type DM acronyms, it'll keep happening.

So watch your info. And get a copy of your credit report.

from USA Today: The first one-time-use video camera goes on sale this week at CVS drugstores in the Northeast.

The makers of the $29.95 camera and CVS hope the device will do for video what one-time-use cameras did for film sales: dramatically increase the market.

Sales of one-time-use cameras — a favorite cheap accessory for vacations, events and school trips — reached 218 million units last year, from 43 million in 1994.

We've got two series running on the site now�Agencies in Strange Places and Outstanding Mission Statements. Maybe we ought to add a third series�--Agency Lobby Art. Here's what the folks at W+K London see each time they pass reception.

"Blender Man" serves as a constant reminder of the ethos of the company and how we approach each day. As Dan Wieden says, "When you don't know, you try desperately to find out. But the minute you think you know, the minute you go - oh, yeah, we've been here before, no sense reinventing the wheel - you stop learning, stop questioning, and start believing in your own wisdom, you're dead. You're not stupid anymore, you are fucking dead."

Blogging has turned over another page. Thanks to Piers Fawkes of PSFK, we now have the subscription model to consider. Piers and cronies have debuted a new blog, IF, or Idea Forge, and they intend to charge for the content.

IF is a daily digest of inspiration for brand planners and creative marketers. IF is an Idea Forge. Whether you work in a marketing department, a communications agency or are just involved in the success of your business - we hope IF provides its members with fresh, effective stimulus.

IF is provided by PSFK, a web publisher who also publishes PSFK.COM. IF is a dedicated service to provide members with suggestions that fuel the rest of their day. We won't be one of those sites pointing out all the great ads around the world, but we may just be the site that will inspire the next set of great ads.

Come join us. We will be holding twice yearly events in the USA, Europe and Asia. The site has RSS, regular newsletters and IF will evolve to hold news of other events, breaking news, forums and a business directory.

The site is in public beta until June 20 2005. Current membership is $20 per month but we're pleased to also offer these introductory and license deals.

Discussing the launch via e-mail, Piers said, "Well you have to try to make this blog stuff pay, no?" Yes. If that's where you're coming from. And that's where AdPulp is coming from. So far, our idea is to find more advertising sponsors for this site and give the content away for free. It'll be interesting to watch this develop and see how many other blogs are willing/ready to jump on the subscription-based model.

In what appears to be a pop culture-like brand hijacking, a Japanese firm has launched Campbell's Seed. The seeds come in a tin that looks exactly the same as the red-and-white Campbell's can except the word "soup" is replaced by "seeds". Inside is a choice of seeds to grow miniature tomatoes, miniature pumpkins or green peas.

The company has sold 25,000 of the cans since they went on the market in Japan at the end of April, with the tomatoes the most popular of the three seeds.

Nike brand planner, Russell Davies, has some choice words for those considering a career as a planner.

3. You Need An Enthusiasm For Brands And Communications And Advertising And That.

Yes, lots of your friends think brands suck and are manipulative and are ruining the world. If you think that, then a) you're mostly wrong and b) you probably shouldn't be a planner. If you think they're just trivial in the larger scheme of things, then a) you're mostly right and b) you probably shouldn't be a planner.

• Holds 36 quart to 50 quart coolers
• Holds up to 100 pounds of ice & beverages

And it's only ten dollars!

USA Today is running an article on the power of the Harvard University brand. Here's what I find interesting.

According to research from the University of Pennsylvania, the percentage of top executives at Fortune 100 companies who were Ivy League undergrads dropped from 14% to 10% from 1980 to 2001.

I wonder how many Ivy Leaguers we have in the ad ranks. One thing I've always enjoyed about this profession is the fact it matters not where you went to school. Sure, if you hope to be an art director someday, a degree from Parsons (an Ivy of the art world) is a great head start. But it's not a prerequisite.

Columbus, OH ad agency, Young Issac, was written up in the print edition of Adweek recently. The source of their newfound fame is a viral effort directed not to unsuspecting and callous consumers, but to those jaded plebes who work in the ad biz, or hope to one day soon.

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Molly Wood, a CNET editor, has published a piece claiming social networking doesn't work.

I've gotten a lot of invitations to Friendster over the years, which, to be honest, I ignored. I always just assumed I didn't have time for that tomfoolery. Plus, I already had a boyfriend, and I already had friends. I know that all sounds horribly snobby, but there it is. But then, along came Orkut. Suddenly, because I was working in the Geek Zone, my coworkers were sending me Orkut invites. Every geek I knew was into it, and the peer pressure got too strong. I signed up. I filled out my little Orkut profile (I think I even uploaded a photo), and for about three weeks, my friends, coworkers, and I obsessively hung out on Orkut. And then, suddenly, we just got bored--weirdly, all at the same time. My entire Orkut generation, all the people who'd found it at the same time I did, just up and lost interest. Of course, round about that time, Orkut got painfully slow, and although it's better now (I just checked it out in the course of writing this column--hey, maybe I'll have a resurgence of interest!), it's still a heck of a lot easier to just e-mail or instant-message the people I know.

The thing I think is odd about these sites is the fact that they tend to be insular. That is, you can not link to a perma page. I guess that's the whole point--that the content belongs to the community in question, not to the entire web. But if networking is the objective and you can't share with everyone, what's the point? I know, I know...the point is exclusivity. Whatever. I, like Wood, am not that impressed.

The Newest Industry points to Google's logo de jour.

The logo commemorates Frank Lloyd Wright's birthday in 1867. And while Wright had nothing to do with advertising, the man was truly a creative's creative.

Kevin Maney, USA Today's technology writer, claims now is the time to launch a web-based business.

"A savvy entrepreneur can get to proof-of-concept with a consumer Internet idea on less than $500,000 of capital," says Dave Whorton, a venture capitalist at TPG Ventures. "Five years ago, it required 15 times more capital and three times more time. Experimentation can happen faster and at lower cost."

If VC money is not your thing, you can always start a blog.

The Webby Awards--the leading international award honoring excellence in Web design, creativity, usability and functionality--held their gala celebration Monday, June 6, in NYC, at the landmark Gotham Hall, a majestic turn of the century ballroom. The Webbys were emceed by comedian Rob Corddry of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (which was surely worth the price of admission).

There are simply too many winners to list here, but I'll point to a few sites of interest.

McSweeney's won for Best Copy

Dogster won for Best Community Site

Emerald Nuts for Best Food + Beverage Site

RTM86 for Best Personal Site

Muzak for Best Professional Services Site

While watching 60 Minutes last Sunday, I was impressed with their piece on the artificially high pricing of pharmaceutical drugs in this country (and the simple remedy to this corporate ill). The centerpiece of the story, Pfizer's marketing vice president, Peter Rost, impressed me as a brave and honorable man. Of course, Pfizer is going to see him a bit differently, since he's calling them on their bullshit on national television.

Now, the New York Times is reporting Dr. Rost's troubles at the office.

First, his employees stopped reporting to him. Then his supervisors stopped returning his calls and now he does not know whom to report to. His secretary left, he said, and he was moved to an office near Pfizer's security department at a company building in Peapack, N.J. The latest blow came Monday, the morning after Dr. Rost, 46, appeared on a segment of "60 Minutes" on CBS about drug prices - a follow-up to his news conference on the subject last year with members of Congress and to the opinion pieces he has written for The New York Times and other newspapers. Ready, as always, to put in a full day at the office, Dr. Rost turned on his computer Monday and tried for the first time in almost two weeks to log into his Pfizer e-mail account.

Access denied.

"This is like being in some kind of corporate twilight zone," Dr. Rost said in an interview yesterday. "I guess everybody's waiting for me to get fired."

So, why is this man putting his lucrative career in such jeopardy?

"Every day we delay, Americans die because they cannot afford life-saving drugs," Rost said.

Pfizer responded at the time by saying that "Dr. Rost has no qualifications to speak on importation."

Given that only slightly more than half of our eligible voters make an effort to go to the polls during any given election, we know what people think about the political process. But hey, you can (and do) vote with your pocketbook--a more meaningful and frequent act.

Eyeteeth: A journal of incisive ideas points us to Buy Blue, a site that analyzes the campaign giving of major corporations.

Naturally, Red Staters can also use this resource to identify firms that share their values. Or they could just head to the nearest Wal-Mart and be done with it.

According to Spiegel, German neo-Nazis are sporting New Balance running shoes and other brands that meet their approval (for reasons surely lost on the brands themselves).

So now they wear something they call the secret insignia of the right-wing scene: New Balance shoes. The "N" on the shoes is supposed to stand for "national."

Brands like Masterrace, Pit Bull Germany and Thor Steinar are especially popular among right-wing youth, whose dress code also includes Doc Marten boots, Fred Perry shirts and Lonsdale jackets.

Adweek: After more than 20 years working in New York at some of the nation's biggest agencies, Bob Potesky abandoned the capital of advertising for the capital of Mississippi.

A former creative director at WPP Group's Young & Rubicam, Potesky last month accepted the position of executive creative director at The Ramey Agency, a 55-person shop in Jackson, Miss., that claims about $30 million in billings. That may seem like an unusual move in the upwardly mobile advertising world, but executives said factors ranging from 2001's terrorist attacks to a tough economy in New York to the tightening screws of the holding companies on big agency life have made smaller shops in the South a more viable option than in the past. To lure talent from the North, Southern agencies use creative freedom and lifestyle perks to counter the salary disparities and unattractive stereotypes of life south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Talent Zoo in Atlanta, which operates a job board and recruits talent for shops nationwide, said the Southeast, led by Atlanta and Miami, is one of the most desired regions for job seekers. In fact, there are more ad people wanting to move south than there are jobs available for them, said Ragan Jones, associate vp of recruiting for the firm.

According to Talent Zoo, the median salary for a creative director in New York is $230,000; in Atlanta, it's $184,000 for the same job. But, executives who have made the move say the cost of living makes that a moot point.

Ad Age: Havas shareholder Vincent Bollore won the four seats he demanded on the holding company’s board of directors for himself and three allies after a stormy shareholder meeting that started at 10 a.m. this morning in Paris and lasted more than four hours.

Mr. Bollore, Havas’s largest shareholder with a 20% stake, wanted seats for himself and three employees of companies associated with Mr. Bollore’s Bollore Group.

Anticipating a large crowd, Havas rented a big hall in Paris rather than holding the meeting at its own offices as usual.

All agencies want to be Agency of Record. Just like all agencies want to be a partner, not a vendor. All agencies need to get over it.

According to Adweek, Old Navy, which used to do some great advertising in-house, is over it.

"We've changed our model," Jonathan Finn from Old Navy said. "We're looking at our business from a long-term perspective. Our creative needs are complex and they're evolving. Interactive, print partnerships and PR—all have added importance in our marketing mix. We just decided that we're better served having a small group of really creative agencies to work with rather than a single agency of record."

We recently reported on Casa Camper, the Spanish shoe manufacturer's boutique hotel in Barcelona. According to Hotel Chatter, Apple Computer is now getting in on the hospitality action.

The Tribeca Grand Hotel has just announced their new iStudio - a premium room outfitted with Apple's latest multimedia technology. The iStudio comes equipped with:

*a fully-loaded G5 computer outfitted with film, photo and sound editing software

*iSight cameras

*a user-friendly video conferencing camera with integrated microphone that will allow guests to have face-to-face chats with friends, families, co-workers and even Tribeca Grand's staff

*Apple wireless keyboards, Apple wireless mouses and a built-in Bluetooth module

* iPod and BOSE Sound Dock

Adrants points to this Toronto Star article on McGraw-Hill's efforts to place ads inside college text books.

Thankfully, the random ad man asked to comment blasted the idea.

"Textbooks are one of the last bastions," said Randy Stein, a partner at Grip Media Ltd., a Toronto ad agency. "There are some things that should remain pure and sacred. What's next, university professors with logos on their blazers like NASCAR?"

Here's a choice nugget from Lewis Lazare's column today, talking about the national ADDY awards:

Leo Burnett won the Best of Show in the print category at the 2005 ADDY Awards for a Cort Guitars campaign. With 18 gold and five silver ADDYs, Burnett also was the most awarded agency in the competition. Burnett's Deputy Worldwide Chief Creative Officer Mark Tutssel headed the judging at the show.

Guess it pays to judge your own work. From a distance, this sounds like it has all the legitimacy of an election in Zimbabwe.

UPDATE: I believe this is part of the winning campaign. You be the judge.

Altoids is conducting an interesting promotion. They want customers to display other uses for the Altoids tin. Although, they do not mention this, it's a neat way to sell-in the recycling ethos.

Chances are Altoids was aware of this guy's iPod battery pack idea when they created the promo. I mean if Boing Boing knows about it, then everyone knows about it.

Fresh Inc. points to the Organic Trade Association's inventive spin on Star Wars, called Grocery Store Wars.

All characters in Store Wars are live-action food puppets—organic vegetables, fruits, pastries and a couple canned goods. The only computer effects are the laser blasts and lightsabers. The rest of the action was brought to life with strings, sticks, wires and trick camera angles.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky is so clever. And hip. And irreverent. Wow, I wish I was one tenth as clever, hip and irreverent as their most lowly intern. If I was, I would have racked up a tractor trailer full of industry awards by now.

Oh, here's how the Coconut Grovies promote an award show:

Hardly Legal contains material that may not be suitable for those under eighteen years of age. If you are under this age, it is strongly advised you seek parental permission before accessing hardly-legal.com. Additionally, it is recommended that those who are easily offended by creatives half their age racking up award after award refrain from viewing this site. YoungGuns’ Hardly Legal features real past winners of the YoungGuns competition, as well as images of rising stars and their work. All featured models are or were under thirty years of age at the time of photography. No images of either creatives or their work may be reproduced or distributed without prior express written consent of YoungGuns.

City Rag is running a photographic exposé on celebs who drink Starbux.

We spent a short time collecting photos from the past few months, and found more than we could possibly post... Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, Mary-Kate Olsen, Drew and Fabrizio, Jessica and Nick, Nicole and her DJ, Pamela Anderson, Macaulay, Jessica Alba, Renee Zellweger, Madonna!

Flickr, the preeminent photo sharing site now owned by Yahoo, is offering free schwag.

Simply send a self-addressed envelope to:

Flickr
P.O.Box 3816
Sunnyvale, CA 94088

Flickr is covering the return postage, gratis.

Blog Herald points to Nick Denton's latest offering, which surprise surprise is not another snarky blog, but snarky t-shirts that advertise his Gawker Media Empire blogs.

Here's the one I want:

My boss handed me a copy of Up The Agency: The Funny Business of Advertising by best-selling author, Peter Mayle, last week. Just finished it. It's wonderfully cynical through and through.

Historically, advertising had attracted individualists, entrepreneurs, and talented misfits. They came to advertising partly because it offered larger and faster rewards than other occupations, but mainly because it was more fun than other occupations, and they feel at home in it. Informal, unpredictable, and dependent on individual skills and creativity, it matched their personalities. It was an interesting and lucrative way of living by your wits.

But as the business becomes more structured, more respectable, more governed by money and corporate jockeying than by ideas, so it will lose its appeal for the individualist. A different animal will inhabit agency offices: The new advertising man, brought up on globalization and the need to maintain dividends and share prices, will take over. He will be good at meetings, adroit at politics, prudent, measured, solid, reliable—a carbon copy of his counterpart at Global Biscuits. And when that happens, working in advertising will be exactly like working in any other international business peddling an international commodity. (St. Martin's Press paperback edition, p. 140-141)

Mayle's book came out in 1990, on the upswing side of agency globalization. Now, it seems the pendulum is moving in the other direction, and small, independent shops are once again being courted by the mega-marketers.

Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion has given marketers a new list of Commandments, based on how he sees the rise of participatory media forever altering the playing field.

Here are the 10 commandments for public relations professionals as I see them in the Golden Era of Participation…

1) Thou shall listen – Utilize every avenue available to you to listen actively to what your publics have to say and feed it back to the right parties.

2) Remember that all creatures great and small are holy – It doesn't matter if it's the New York Times calling on you or an individual blogger, both have power. Take them all seriously.

3) Honor thy customer – Create programs that celebrate customers and they will celebrate you.

4) Thou shall not be fake – Keep it real; don't hide behind characters and phony IDs.

5) Covet thy customers – Don’t sue your fans. You will alienate them.

6) Thou shall be open and engaging – Involve your customers in the PR process. Invite them to help you develop winning ideas and become your spokespeople.

7) Thou shall embrace blogging – It’s not a fad, it’s here to stay. Be part of it.

8) Thou shall banish corporate speak – People want to here from you in a human voice. Don’t hind behind corporate speak. It will soon sound like ye olde English.

9) Thou shall tell the truth – If you don’t tell the truth, it will come out anyway.

10) Thou shall thinketh in 360 degrees – Ask not what you can do for your customer, but also what your customer can do for you.

Here's an interesting story from the New York Post about the NIKEiD 255 Studio, an eye-catching storefront with a floor-to-ceiling sneaker display located in NYC's NoLIta neighborhood. Only the shoes aren't for sale--at least for the common folk.

It's a "design lab" where a select few (designers, celebrities and athletes) have been invited to customize their own Nike footwear. But that doesn't stop Nike from luring passersby in with a deceptively retail-like facade - only to be shot down when they dare to ask to buy sneakers on the spot.

Jen Beckman, who runs a gallery on nearby Spring Street, has ranted about the store on her blog, UnBeige, since the studio "opened" on March 31.

"My friend and I tried to go in the other day - and this big bouncer guy said to me, 'Do you have an appointment?'" she says.

"I said, 'Are you kidding me?' He was sort of sheepish about it. Because it's so dumb! I said, 'Well, could I make an appointment?' And he said, 'We're only inviting celebrities and designers right now.'"

Unless you're a "friend of the brand," you're out of luck, a Nike spokesman confirmed.

I always thought the essence of Nike's brand was that being physically active--in any way--was good for everybody. Doesn't this exclusivity fly in the face of that?

Washington Post: Using carefully scripted on-premise marketing as the linchpin of hundred-million-dollar ad campaigns, the $15 billion-a-year liquor industry is pushing the concept of affordable luxury into the hands of people in their twenties and thirties as they lean over bars to order drinks. The idea is to get them to order not just a martini, but a Grey Goose vodka martini. To not just do shots of tequila, but to sip Jose Cuervo Reserva. To not order Scotch on the rocks, but Johnnie Walker Gold.

Which is perhaps why Ivan Menezes, chief executive of Diageo North America, the maker of Johnnie Walker, summarizes his strategy like this: "They may not be able to stay at the Four Seasons, but they can order a drink at the bar."

Maryland commuters are being subjected to what one person has deemed, "authoritarian post-modernism," on their daily train ride.

Thanks to Articulatory Loop for the post.

Adfreak's Gregory Solman posted an interesting tidbit on Ground Zero today.

It’s good to put one’s achievements in perspective. At Ground Zero in Marina del Rey, Calif., they go a step further: To remind themselves of what the awards are really worth, they store them in garbage cans en route to the lavatories. As you can see, the “trophy case” has a prominent new growth: a newly acquired tower of Belding bowls. “Basically, it is a symbiotic relationship,” says creative partner Court Crandall. “You need both the awards and the trash cans. If you have the awards but no trash cans, it’s self-indulgent. If you have the trash cans but no awards, that’s kind of pathetic. So you really need the two.” Empty-handed creatives, now you know where to go dumpster diving.

Adfreak reader Thulsa Doom sees it this way:

And if you have both awards and trash cans, that makes you pathetically self-indulgent.

Few things are as laughable as agencies who sneer at awards while entering every show in sight.

It is true that placing your awards in such a conspicuous configuration makes them more noticeable, not less. If Ground Zero truly disdained awards they would have put them out back in real dumpsters and told no one.

Dooce posted this outdoor board to her Flickr page.

At first, I figured Utah Brides must be some kind of mail order service like they have in Russia. It's not. What it is, is Behive State ingenuity.

Nat Ives of the New York Times put this ad guy on the defensive, with a question about Advertising Week.

"There is nothing wrong with celebrating a great industry," said O. Burtch Drake, president at the American Association of Advertising Agencies, which conceived of the first Advertising Week. "What's wrong with tooting our own horn?"

Brand mascots do some horn tooting at last year's event.

I don't know how someone as irreverent as Steven Grasse of Gyro got past my radar, but he did. Until now. Now, I know there is at least one kook running a major agency today. There may be hope for our kind yet.

Here are some excerpts from an Adweek piece on Grasse that ran last fall:

In addition to doing ads for clients such as Puma, RJ Reynolds and Virgin Records, Grasse, 40, has turned his avocations into vocations. He has cashed in on the lad-mag appeal of rude clothing with his G-Mart and Sailor Jerry lines, and he directs the cult-film series Bikini Bandits.

What do you think is the most overrated campaign?

iPod. What is it? A bunch of silhouettes standing around? What the fuck is that? It's kind of like my experience with MTV, making videos. If you've got a hit song, it doesn't matter what the video is. The iPod is a hit product; it didn't matter what the ads were.

Who do you despise most in advertising?

What's his name-Bogusky? I think he's a hypocrite. What's up with the Burger King shit? You can't do the "Truth" [anti-tobacco ads] and [handle a fast-food company like] Burger King at the same time.

What's the smartest business decision you've ever made?

To not get bought out.

Veroni's meat wagon comes to us via Flickr user, Myriapod.

Wired: Microsoft is cooperating with China's government to censor the company's newly launched Chinese-language web portal, a spokesman for the tech giant said.

The policy affects blogs created through the MSN Spaces service, said Adam Sohn, a global sales and marketing director at MSN.

Microsoft and its government-funded Chinese business partner work with authorities to omit certain forbidden language, Sohn said, declining to provide specific examples.

"I don't have access to the list at this point so I can't really comment specifically on what's there," he told The Associated Press.

On Monday, Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, said bloggers were not allowed to post terms to MSN Spaces such as "democracy," "human rights" and "Taiwan independence." Attempts to enter those words were said to generate a message saying the language was prohibited.

Boing Boing, Gaping Void and Johnnie Moore have all posted on Ben Hammersley's presentation at Reboot in Copenhagen last week. Here's a slide from Ben's Power Point deck.

Mr. Moore reports:

He gave a great talk called Etiquette and the Singularity, including the notion that the first blogger was Sir Richard Steele back in 1709. Steele wanted to circulate his opinions so started writing a thrice-weekly letter which was widely distributed by street urchins.

He called it The Tatler and it mutated into what we'd now call a dinosaur blog (ie magazine). Ben went on to talk about how at the same time, people started dressing in ways that made status less easy to determine and spent a lot of time talking in coffee houses. A parallel for the freebooting conversations for which we now have the internet.

I like this way of thinking about blogging. Not as something extraordinary and techie, but as something simple and innately human. Back then, conversation led to The Enlightenment. Maybe we can have another one of those today?

Lewis Lazare: Late last week Harris, the city's third-largest financial institution, invited five shops to pitch the bank's ad business. Or more accurately five shops plus one. The plus one, in this instance, is Euro RSCG/Chicago, the corpse that former Leo Burnett creative whiz kid Steffan Postaer is trying to resuscitate. Euro RSCG has joined forces with Arnold Worldwide/ Chicago, the incumbent on the Harris account, to try to hang onto the business.

Both Arnold and Euro RSCG are part of the giant Paris-based Havas agency holding company. Bill Flynn, who heads the Arnold shop locally, refused comment, but he and his shop appear to