The Guardian reports that almost four years after the logo's launch, Tehran threatens to boycott the Games unless the design is changed. Iran says the logo spells the word Zion, the stronghold of King David of the Israelites, also known today as Jerusalem, and by extension, the Biblical land of Israel. Oh well that's alright then, you guys can stay home and play olympics with yourselves, you're excused, and we don't need a note from your mother.

Yes, they're apparently very very serious about this.

1984, a subsidiary of Ogilvy South Africa, thought a good way to promote an upcoming horrors flick was to invent Doctor Uba who deals in body parts, and give out flyers where he offers money for limbs. Mahala was one of the first blogs to pick up on it, and hoped it was an elaborate hoax "dressed up as an art project to raise awareness". They were closer to the truth than the cops who tried to find the "Doctor" who was offering cash for organs.

Man thinks he's original, sells ad-space tattoo on neck. News at eleven.

Class, pay attention, this B3ta thread starts out as a great example of how not to seed work on the web, as Axelk was revealed as working for 7th chamber and Paddy Power in five comments flat. Ends with a pretty decent show on how to man up and admit ones defeat, as Axelk turns around buys ad-placement in the b3ta newsletter. Good show. Choice quotes below, but y'all should really the thread, it's epic.

this is not very clever
you are a marketing bot
---
i wasn't questioning wether you are human...
so answer THIS question directly:

DID YOU SUBMIT THIS CONTENT FOR A CLIENT? ~(DefyingDarwin)

Welcome to Sweden, the land where bimbo-bloggers rule. I'm not sure why, but the dismal state in the quality of our journalists might have something to do with it. People here do not drink the sand because there is no water, they drink the sand because they do not know the difference.

Act I - The Nazi-connection, and threats against journalists

2 Hours ago the user Geoff Konig at Vimeo uploaded this clip showing helicopter view of the Statue of Liberty's face covered in Saran Wrap, adding: "This footage is amazing! This should keep the skeptics busy! So thrilled to hear people talking about Alpha-1 for once!"

update Thursday Feb 24 - the videos on Vimeo are removed now. Replacing with youtube.

In a desperate bid to become social-marketing relevant, Oreo cookies announced that they wanted to break the Guinness World Record on Tuesday for the most "Likes" to a Facebook post within 24 hours.

Let’s go for over 50,000 likes

said the cookies-page humbly on Monday. Well along came Lil' Wayne, and the record was pretty much crushed in an instant as you can see in the screenshots above. The thing is, one has to register the record breaking attempt in advance, and Lil'Wayne isn't really after it, as much as he is showing off.

LUSH has had troubles, as their site announces: "we are very sorry to confirm that our website has been the victim of hackers. Hackers that made off with credit card numbers... The Guardian suggests that since Lush are warning customers to contact their banks , it may indicate it has failed to encrypt the details held on its site - which, if true, could mean it has failed to meet regulations known as PCI compliance. Lush has responded by taking the shopping site down, as well as leaving a message for the hackers.

TO THE HACKER

Kim Kardashian is reportedly fuming over a new toy from pipedream products NSFW link - bewarned. It's a blowup doll, and the cover of the box is poking fun at her Carl's Jr commercial, showing her spilling big fat hamburger all over the bed. Splashnews says

TV beauty Kim Kardashian is likely to be feeling a little deflated when she finds out she's been made into a blow-up sex doll called "Kinky Kim". The box for the x-rated inflatable pokes fun at Kim's raunchy ads for burger chain Carl's Jr.

The New York City transit agency approved a bus advertisment that depicts a plane flying toward the World Trade Center towers as they burn along with a rendering of the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. Or rather a totally pulled out of their arse idea of what the former Burlington coat factory will look like, when it's 100 stories taller and gleaming white.

The ad was paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an organization that opposes radical Islamic influence in the United States. The group's executive director says she doesn't find the ad offensive. He wouldn't though.

What exactly, are McDonald's putting in their cheeseburgers and chicken McNuggets? First there was that guy who stole his neighbors car and went to a McDonald's drive-through wanting to trade drugs for cheeseburgers. Now a Toledo woman, Melodi Dushane, wanted her chicken McNuggets so bad that she went on a rampage, McAttack, when her local McDonald's was not serving them at 6:30 AM.

At 6:30 am it's breakfast time, but this girl had likely been partying all night - CBS12 reports "Other employees closed the drive-thru window as the customer tries to push it open. She then throws a beer bottle through the window, shattering the glass."

MAC Cosmetics and Rodarte created a makeup collection inspired by Kate and Laura Mulleavy's trip to Mexico. The sisters said they "were struck by the ethereal landscape and the impoverished factory workers floating to work at dawn in a sleepy, dreamlike state." which may explain the hollow-eyed gothy pale look the makeup created. The Mac Rodarte collection contains pale lavenders, shimmering lipglosses and pale pinks.

A few well-chosen make-up bloggers were sent samples and the press release, but there was a makeup-blogger backlash. Forget mommy-bloggers, and grannybloggers, makeup-bloggers are fierce - and they were all very offended by the names of the colors in this collection. "The Frisky" headlined with: MAC/Rodarte Makeup Collaboration Names Nail Polish After Impoverished, Murdered Women. Liloblog called it not edgy - "Insensitive", and Yinka at Vexinthecity tracked the issue plus all blogs posts about it, and while she was at it declared the whole palette B.O.R.I.N.G. You tell'em, girl. Chicagoblog agrees: MAC Rodarte makeup named for Juarez is not pretty, but mainly because poverty, factory work and women being killed in Juarez is not pretty.

Color lines has a whole story on The Beauty Bloggers Who Blew MAC and Rodarte's Juarez Cover and now finally MAC Responds To Rodarte Controversy With Action. The New York Mag says that Mac will donate a portion of profits, for programs to help the women and girls of the troubled city Juarez.

You know that I'm exited about Tron, and right now I'm listening to the Daft Punk's Tron legacy score which has been leaked online and helpfully uploaded to youtube for maximum spread.

This will not please Disney. Unless of course, they are the ones responsible for the leaking... Hmm.
The Tron movie came about in an interesting way, at the Boards Summit Ed Ulbrich, from Digital Domain explained: "Tron is not a movie" the case study of how a prototype launched a multi-faceted world. Tron is not, and never will be just the film.

Previously on Tron, the Flynn Lives - Grid Concept / Prototype film and that same film as a mashup with Michael Jacksons "Beat It".

Tron Legacy hits U.S. theaters on Dec. 17, 2010 in Disney Digital 3D™ and IMAX® 3D and I'm already looking for my Tardis because, gawd, I can't wait!

Edit OMG Bonus! Extended versions over here from 107.7 thanks metafilter. These tracks sound nothing like the youtubified ones, and IMHO are much better.

Here's an endorsement nobody wants: Tampa Bay reports that a man stole his neighbor's car, then went to a McDonald's drive-through where he tried to trade marijuana and prescription drugs for cheeseburgers. Clearly a very bad case of the munchies. I mean, everyone knows that Wendy's greasy burgers are the only cure.

Sears recently launched their Sears Blue Crew HQ Website. A futuristic "star trek" panel that serves as the retailer's portal to all its online properties, including:
- Sears Yard Guru
- Sears Chef Challenge
- Appliance matchmaker
- Blue Crew members

and the list goes on. It even has links to funny videos involving the blue crew. Obviously, this is a marketing ploy to promote all of its launched micro-sites and place it all in one central location for "ease and convenience," as Sears likes to say.

I think in theory, its a good idea. The layout is cool and it does have a cool "news hook" to it, but the actual Website/portal is another story. It's really difficult to navigate and see all of Sears microsites without getting dizzy.

The greek man Minas Karatzoglis who found that his image was on the "Turkish Yoghurt" packaging in Sweden and promptly filed suit for 50 million kronor has agreed to a conciliation. Lindahls Mejeri will pay him 2 million Swedish kronor, to avoid a process in Greece.

Anders Lindahl, the MD of Lindahls Mejeri, where the Turkish Yogurt is their bestseller, says to aftonbladet;

We believe that we've done the right thing the whole way through. We bought the image from a stock image company, and paid for it. The money that we're giving to Minas Karatzoglis now we will demand back from the stock image company.

A lesson to learn from this is, stock image photos are not cheap.

Short recap: a flock of pretty blond girls attended the Denmark-Netherlands game wearing teeny orange dresses. The dresses came free with a sixpack of Bavaria Beer, and by halftime they were ejected from the stadium for engineering a marketing stunt in a Budweiser sponsored event. This story has everything, scantily clad ladies, sacked TV personalities, even diplomatic tension as Fifa brings charges over "ambush marketing".

The images of the ladies in their little orange dresses were cabled out all over the world, and the
Bavaria beer site traffic rocketed after world cup stunt. The women are less exited about the sudden interest, Dispatch reports that they feel ‘traumatised’, while Fifa are ‘appalled’, and the Bavaria brewery is ‘concerned’. There's also an investigation in to how Robbie Earl's tickets ended up in the women's hands, and how on earth did he even manage to get 40 tickets? Either way, he's now sacked from being an ITV pundit‎. That'll teach him.

Wow, BP, you're in so much trouble, even car brands are jabbing at you now. Over at Fiat.nl there's an animated header that shows a simple drawing of a flower "good", then an oil-drenched bird; "bad". This little animated banner is supposed to attract attention to the new Doblò, Punto and Panda. I gotta read up on Fiats, I though it was the 500 (so CUTE!) that was the hybrid car.

Hat tip to @osocio's tweet

BP certainly don't have it easy, with all their operations to stop the flow. Now they're rolling out a campaign to help them with their image. Clearly missing @BPGlobalPR spot on advice The best way to get people to respect your brand is to be respectable their image-cleanup efforts is tanking just as hard as Top Hat, Top Kill and whatever else they failed to come out on top with did for that pesky oil leak.

But there are some that are actually doing a lot worse in managing their public image right now. This youtube film, spoofing the "We are the world" song but with the lyrics 'We con the world , We con the people, We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper' sung by "Captain Stabbin'" and friends (a reference to Captain Stubing of the Love boat?) was circulated by the Israeli government.

Retracting their original linkage of the film, the Israeli government spokesmen nevertheless maintain that the video is "fantastic" and "what Israelis feel.". The sound you just heard was half of the planet facepalming in sync.

★$ (Starbucks!) facebook page was "hacked" yesterday, or rather hijacked as Drew Benvie rightly calls it in his post about the mess. It's Drew's screendump of the ensuing twitter-worry as people saw it happening and were wondering what was going on.

Reputation online says; "This is an interesting situation. On one hand, Starbucks did well to limit the damage by responding quickly, on the other, ’social media guidelines’ say to avoid deleting posts or comments at all costs." and ponders the difficulty of managing Fan pages and the likes. Sure, one shouldn't be deleting messages without noting that one has done so, but in this case - unlike the Nestlé facebook mishap - couldn't the "Israel suck0rz" messages be seen as nothing but spam? Do brands need to alert everyone to the amount of spam they delete? In that case, I deleted twenty libido rapido and one cheap fashion shoes spam before they reached the Adland pages here today, everyone happy? Should I alert you every time I do this, or will it be enough that I tell you right now that I do this every day, including on weekends?

Drew points out the obvious pain with facebook: "Whilst some online platforms enable moderation, Facebook is one that does not. " which leaves Starbucks with a wide-open page, fanned by 7.5million people who all have rights to comment on the wall of Starbucks. Starbucks could have chosen to disable "Fans can write or post content on the wall", but as they did not, they opened up to "Fans can hijack your wall for political messages and thus reach a wider audience, namely yours". There is no "moderated posting by fans to wall" setting option provided by facebook. Fanning (or as it is now known, liking) any major popular brand allows anyone to use that brand's platform as a megaphone for their own message. Carefully managed brands might want to reconsider that facebook fan page, or they might find themselves, like Starbucks, hating on Israel.