Remember that Toyota Prius campaign that Well, at least he drives a prius, right? in "spoof or homage" because it looked like a fake ad campaign to us. I said then "Who spent all this energy on doing a fake campaign I wonder"... But wonder no more - David Krulik did them and proudly displays them on his portfolio site. Krulik actually works at Ogilvy New York, where they don’t have the Prius account.

Johan Jansson at Stimulansbloggen emailed David Krulik to ask him about these ads, he got this reply.

Hi Johan,
The ads are 100% fake.
Toyota did not, nor in my estimation, would ever order these kinds of ads.
I created them for fun. And being an Art Director in advertising, they were meant only as self promotion. How this thing blew up as big as it has continues to baffles me. Hope this helps. And good luck with your blog!

(Much more inside)

You make the call after the jump:
Is this a well-done ad for a network television show
(in this case, MGM's American Gladiators on NBC),
or a sly PSA on the possible side effects of steroid use?

Have you been seeing these little things in the footer of emails recently too?

P Please consider the environment before printing this email.

How it is made:

P Please consider the environment before printing this email.

Here's the thing though, I haven't printed an email since 1997. Not printing papers doesn't do much at all as an active environmentalist act. So I have another question for you email-green-peeps. What type of electricity do you use? Are your computers on at all times? Is your companies server hosted in the cheapest possible colocation space, where you're probably using un-eco friendly electricity 24/7 all year, or have you found a green alternative? Adland is hosted at memset, a carbon neutral company, because - duh - I actually think about these things and worry about my carbon footprint which includes worrying about this servers impact on our environment. I guess what I'm saying is, next time you sent one of those silly little things out in your email, consider what that email travels through. Being green isn't only about saving paper.

My my, you must be really really naive if you thought that the Dove campaign was't a tad retouched. Of course it was, retouch includes getting better colors and removing distracting stuff such as plain old dust, seams in clothing or stray strands of hair. Still, some people find this quote from an interview with Pascal Dangin in the New Yorker a 'shocking revelation'.

I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women” in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

Oh Mom. You are the center of our target market. We write taglines just for you. Moms depend on Kool-Aid like kids depend on Moms. Choosy moms choose JIF. Kid Tested Mother approved. Nestle Nesquik - Kid delicious. Mom nutritious. We aim everything from house cleaning products to food to the car that takes the kids home at you. We let you star in so many of our ads. You are the sex symbol, the cleaner, the nurturer, the food maker, the boss, the errand runner, the comforter, the wife, the mistress, in short - the Mom.

We'll have famous moms in ads, like Brooke.
Bright Beginnings - Brooke Shields (2004) 0:30 (USA)

And even famous fictional moms:
Agion - That's Revolting (2007) 1:15 (USA) starring Florence Henderson

stereotypes - sometimes they are the funniest thing about mom.

The Cleaning Mom.
VIM - Prison Visitor (2004) 0:30 (Canada)

the MILF
Tag Body Spray - Mrs. Drake (2005) 0:30 (USA)

A group that calls themselves "Brysterne på Bussen" (The boobs on the bus) are a tad annoyed at the constant iamges of nude women in the public ad-space in Denmark, most recently in a campaign for a plastic surgeon.

»We wonder where all the naked men are. Why is it always naked women that we see in the public space. Today anything can be improved [with plastic surgery], and it is a shame that men can't also see how they can optimize their bodies. That they never see nor get the chance to compare their genitals to other mens.« says spokesperson Irene Manteufel a journalist and part of the group "The boobs on the bus" to Politiken.dk.

To show what a truly equal society should do, they have taken the current plastic surgeon ad now running in Denmark which shows a pair of naked breasts with the line "New Breasts", and photoshopped it for a male version instead. It reads: "New penis" and depicts a full frontal nude man showing off his stuff.

Spam, we've had our ups and downs, well mainly downs, but still, I'm sorry that I missed your 30th birthday. I would've sent you some "libido rapido" pills or secured your financial future by helping some Nigerian prince claim a fortune in offshore banks after a few nominal fees, but I was so busy finetuning my spamfilter and blacklists that your birthday slipped my mind.

You've come such a long way in 30 years, from that first spam mail that was sent to 600 people by Gary Thuerk, an aggressive DEC marketer sent out on May 3, 1978 with those messy headers. Now it's not just about tech-event announcements, there's also 419 scams, phishing, pump and dump stock scams and countless products being sold in mass email - 100 billion per day in 2007.

Spam is the heart of spamusement cartoons, spam opened the spam poetry institute and spam inspired Katharina Arndt to create affectionate embroidery with lines such as "Enlarge your penis" and "exquisite replica watches" in her 'Life should be full of luxuries' exhibition. No longer content with being synonymous to spiced meat or that really annoyed frustrated feeling one gets when sifting through an inbox full of junk in an effort to find legit email, you spam inspire writers and artists to soul search our high tech must have pill filled world. What would we do without you, dear Spam?

Save a shitload of time, bandwidth and money that's what we'd do. Here's your cake, spam, I hope you choke on it.

Alec tipped us to this rather vague MSNBC story that seems to announce the thirty minute commercial - programs created around sponsors products.

Digital Studio's first productions, which will premiere this summer, are a science-fiction series starring Rosario Dawson called "Gemini Division" and a quirky comedy about a college-aged zombie called "Woke Up Dead," said NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co.

If we take a minute to think about this, we know that the commercial-as-program on broadcast TV rather than the web is already here. Take Americas Next Top Model which exports around the world for example, all those fancy prizes the models get are edited out when you watch the show here in Sweden simply because covergirl can't be bought around here (nevermind that in-program advertising is a legal nightmare around here).

Then there's the "hit MySpace personality" Dan Fielding a.k.a ‘Domestic God’, the character who built up an online following with thousands of fans tuning into his video clips on domestic life. The project, which began in February 2007, has been revealed as an experiment to assess the potential for a new TV show. Electrolux, who are behind Dan's persona he's actually played by actor James Rawlings, are now in talks with several broadcasters to develop a series. Electrolux weren't hiding behind Dan though, they sprinkled many clues around - for example:

We've been discussing brand names that don't export well on adlist this week. Some things can have names that people in other countries may misunderstand. It all began with this can above.

To which I exclaimed "personally I'm simply horrified that it comes in a can and is microwavable." but UK adlisters assured me that it's actually pretty decent. American and other adlisters meanwhile, were rolling on the floor laughing.

The UK does have a few of these not possible for US export food gems, such as:

But really, Americans aren't much better I mean they serve:

Oh no, not again, like we didn't see enough of this "clever" Greek flavour when the movie "My Big Fat GRΣΣK Wedding" came out. Few things annoy me as much as faux greek, but faux cyrillic and heavy metal bands idiot use of cool "umlauts" are right up there with it. Us arty folks already have a bit of an idiot reputation, what with some "silly art school" behind us where no "real subjects" were studied, and lets not forget that the clients nephew has a mac so he can probably "whip something up". Do not cement our reputation as fools with stuff like this, please. They'll let copywriters get away with calling calling a chimpanzee a "monkey", but that's because they don't know any better themselves. (Here's a trick for you who don't know the difference between an ape and a monkey, monkeys have tails). With three million Americans residents in the United States that claim Greek descent and god knows how many ex-college kids that learned at least some of the letters (enough to join a fraternity or sorority at least), you might just be insulting someones intelligence when you're trying to be smart. If you're unlucky, you'll be insulting the client. Stop it.

And on it goes. We already saw Virgin Mobile in Canada capitalize on the Spitzer scandel. Now Adage.com is reproting that Georgi vodka is in talks to put the bottom of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's call girl, Ashley Dupre, on the backside of every bus in New York.

Eva Longoria Parker who plays Gabrielle Solis on Desperate housewives may want to call a lawyer - or just close her eyes and pretend she never saw this.

Pipedream products (link totally NSFW!) has come up with a series of blow-up dolls themed around stars characters in TV shows and films - I don't know if this is sheer genius or creepy as hell.

There's Sarah Jessica Parker as her sex in the city character, and Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson, Jessica Alba as her Sin City self. To save you from persuing any porn-pages you may click read more simply laugh at the packaging of these things. I hope I don't have to repeat that they are considered kind of not safe for work etc - I mean, it's blow-up doll packaging. There will be words on it that may offend you or your pets.

"Think of the children! Won't somebody think of the children!"

The Ad Council has just come out with a campaign they trot out the old "think of the children" idea.

What a tired old idea. Remember the Daisy girl?

Holy wtf, the christians have caught on to the hype, learned a few buzzwords and invented a few more and now there's Christvertising where prayer can make your product be positioned in a positive light in the eyes of that guy in the sky. If he likes it, everyone else will. Talk about the great influencer, right?

No, really. Srsly. Check out Christvertising.com. Try not to let your jaw drop all the way down to the floor. Or die of laughter.

Back in February, the Travel Channel announced Dallas' Moroch as their agency of record, and for their first project, they went to work on a campaign for Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern (a.k.a. the man with the cast-iron stomach and anodized aluminum, copper-core intestines), the new season of which premieres tonight.

Along with the print campaign (read more to see an example), the television campaign is freakishly fun and gastronomically riveting, but not for the faint of heart, delicate of alimentary canal or those of an otherwise weak constitution.

Superagrunts, behold the eclectic and epicurean mastications of Moroch and Andrew Zimmern with Break Room versions 1, 2 and 3, Vending Machine 1, 2 and 3 and Street Vender 1, 2 and 3. Bon appétit!

Speaking of frickin' weird ads, while I was checking out the links to the previous story I was surfing - oh the horrors - condom less on the Internet so to speak, and I *gasp* actually saw the banner ads.

They are really scary. Trust me.

Taken from Everything's Better With Brentter: Lexus - Missing h

So Lexus just released this spot promoting their new hybrid line of automobiles. In it they try to show us what a typical day would be like if all of a sudden a letter in the alphabet (you guessed it: the "H") were to all of a sudden go missing. This was a product of Team One (LA) and I have to admit that I liked this spot, but that's just because I think I might have some sort of psychological disorder that makes me like 90% of all Lexus ads.....no matter how "off" they might be in concept (I'm still waiting to get the test results from the doc. though, so we'll just have to wait and see on whether this is treatable).
...........

An update on that Starbucks Holiday cheer - presumably happens in drive-throughs - now we learn that cops in California pull over drivers who have done nothing wrong just to hand them a Starbucks coupon. Get the hell away, really? How would you react if a police car went all blinking lights on you, pulled you over and then handed you a coupon for a decaf latte?

Hey kids! It's yet another Crispin Porter + Bogusky Burger King campaign where we're hotly divided on whether the commercials are brilliant, blah or a bucket of bullpucky! Yay! Watch and decide for yourself!

Other people have been calling them misgony King (marketingwhore), George Parker of adscam is wondering Why is the "Whopper Freakout" freaking me out?, Community guy warns that watching all seven minutes may cause Whopper cravings, quite a few people think it's their current favorite campaign like Marobella's branding soapbox there. Bloggers like Twistimage find themselves spending at least eight minutes watching a lowly ad, but then also making a blog posting about it. Bestweekever suggests that McDonald's retort with a spot about the guy who threw himself into traffic after arriving ten minutes too late to order a McGriddle. Creativity Online has an interview with director Henry Alex Rubin about the making of these ads. And inside, we have the single serving TV commercial versions of the whopper freakout campaign.

Arianna Huffington of the Huffingtonpost asked Rich Silverstein of Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners fame if he might have some ideas on how to help the Democrats and Rich responded:

"Here is my thinking," Silverstein told me, "What if we could TiVo the last six-plus years and play them back - without comment -- for the American people, and let them connect the dots? It's not a pretty picture." Silverstein's take away message is uncluttered and direct: "Haven't we had enough? Democrats '08."

Three posters - "Names," "Events," and "Slogans" remind everyone what has been happening these past eight years.