The idea is quite nice, turn the vending machine into a slender pole, reminding people that Diet Coke is the skinny choice. The 1 minute and 44 seconds showing it off is a bit much though, the idea is easily understood it from the first shot.

The machines were spotted all over Paris, giving away free diet coke. At hairdressers, in gyms, squeezed between other vending machines, in the middle of the bridges, streets and cafés. There's even a pinterest shot in this study, no idea why anyone would be pinteresting that they spotted this machine.

BBDO Argentina put a new twist on the refreshing 7Up brief by creating the 'Melting Machine' and cooling down citizens in the heated summer with free 7up and a fun way to win a 6-pack. Through atwitter hashtag passers by could guess when the ice-machine would melt and set the last chilled can free, and the one who guessed the closest won a sixpack. It's a very cute idea.

Red Cross has a problem with blood donors being irregular. Take recent events in Boston as an example, lots of people donated blood to help, which menas banks there are full up (yeay!) but blood is like milk, it doesn't keep forever so if you're of the donating sort you should try to schedule your donations a few times a year to help keep levels up.

These days a simple image of a great billboard won't do, nope, one must make a case study about a billboard before one releases the billboard to the ad-loving crowd like us. This is why you saw this tweet:

Y&R New Zealand make a weather report billboard. Ha ha., funny guys. twitter.com/adland/status/…

Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) is an investigative newspaper in Puerto Rico, and with the help of DDB they used twitter right. They created 2000 twitter journalists who all followed 2000 people (that famous twitter limit), and then paid attention. They saw what ordinary people tweeted, famous people tweeted, government employees tweeted and sometimes they find things that lead to stories... This is a nice new twist to the twitter establishment, and it knocks the usual tactic of having a "announcement account" that follows no one off its perch. Nicely done.

Oh hold up, what's going on here then, eh? (By the way, I've heard a Canadian say "eh" exactly once and I had get him severely drunk before he'd humor me with that).

"To share the joy of the holidays, a McDonald's Big Mac was built using festive lights inside multiple transit shelters in Vancouver, British Columbia in December. Each layer of the burger was represented by its own colour, differentiating the ingredients of this classic sandwich."

Well, that's rather.. festive.

SEAT technology has a clever twist, every time you brake this energy is not wasted, it's put back in the car. How do we explain this to people? Surprise taxi passengers in Düsseldorf Germany by deleting some of the fare off the taxameter every time he car breaks.

As an aside, it seems there's quite the inflation in the hidden-camera product demonstration these days, but I wouldn't mind at all if I got a taxi ride for two Euros. That's great! Unlike the Nissan Leaf Taxi this isn't preaching to the converted, each rider seems quite happily surprised and I hope they left with a leaflet about how the car works.

Three / 3 wanted to promote their pocket wi-fi, so they used wi-fi networks to spread their message - very simple first idea. They then put together this far-too-long case study, complete with cheesy music and a voice-over lady with a thick Swedish accent, adding to the impression that this is student work. "We used an unexpected media-channel", except that it's totally expected by now. We've seen Wi-fi used as ad space several times before and badlanded it twice. Wifi has been used to shill everything from magazines to cars, this might be the first time the medium is actually the message: "get pocket-Wifi".

1 out of 3 Belgians watch their favorite shows in delayed mode, meaning they fast forward through the commercials.

"DDB and Volkswagen now come up with a creative solution that rethinks the standard tv ad format. To promote the new Volkswagen Beetle Cabrio we developed the so-called 'slowmercial'."

That's really cute guys, so cutting it's like whoah, it's like nobody ever thought of that before. Except Markenfilm in Germany. in the 90s. And those rumored TiVo fast forward ads in the early 2000s in the US. Welcome to the future. Nice ads.

I mock because I love guys, it's really kinda clever.

MEANWHILE IN ISRAEL.. a country that is feeling the same crunch that the rest of the world is, some crafty ad people decided to sell their media (radio) via ... business cards. Wait, this is pretty thanks to (gasp!) QR code. A website was created where people could put their info in, and their erecived pretty blue cards with on QR code on them, but listen to the code and it's basically a radio ad for you. The second example in the clip reminds me a little of the Canon shutter dance 2008 which won Grand Prix in Cannes. Radio can be very clever way to advertise.

Lexus has this ad in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. You can clearly see three models "blending in" to the background. When you use your smartphone on the ad, the models "blend out"... Just like the Lexus IS - or that's the idea you're supposed to take away from this. Unless of course all you take away from this is "hubba hubba" after watching bikini-girls walk across a magazine page. That is if you bother to do this.

For the client Newspaperswork, the marketing platform for all Belgian newspaper publishers, Duval Guillaume Belgium created a little stunt that, which like their red light district stunt, and the dramatic surprise in a quiet town square, this might play better for us viral viewers.

Remember Mister Imagine's Toy Store we told you about in October? This christmas, Americans will spend $135 billion on gifts, with a large chunk of that going straight to video games. Energy BBDO, Xi Chicago and The Chicago Children's Museum launched the antidote, Mister Imagine's Toy Store. It was a pop-up shop full of nothing but cardboard, encouraging real play and creativity (while promoting the Museum's "Unboxed" exhibit). Here's the case study showing it to be quite the success, because what kid doesn't want to go all sharpie, googly eye, glue-stick glitter and scissor crazy on a box to create, say, a tyrannosaurus rex? Yep. They loved it.

Here's an interesting way to raise money for the Queen Silvia Children's Hospital, let the kids play with the direct mail before mailing it! The reason I don't have this client is because I'd simply ask Queen Silvia to give up her 80 million kronor apanage* for a few years and donate that money to the hospital that bears her name, or maybe just wear last years dress to the Nobel Prize dinner. What the hey, right?

The song is "In five years time" by Noah and the Whale. It's a good one.

How do you announce the waterproof cellphone? Do it secret agent style, smuggle the phones into unsuspecting winners hands by hiding them in free sodas. At least that's what CP+B did when they showed off Xperia acro S best feature during the screening of Skyfall in Stockholm, Sweden. A few lucky winners walked home with brand new phones... Only slightly worse for wear as they smelled like soda pop, but that ain't nothing a little rinse can't cure.

See also the post with the images of each painting for full story.

It was one of those warm indian summer days in New York. I heard birds in the trees. I felt my knees shaking, and my head spinning. I let it touch my lips once and am now so hopelessly addicted and loyal to Burts' bees that my former chapstick is crying in its beer while stalking me on facebook. So pleased to see this work from agency Baldwin& that rivals the product itself in quality. It's a clever idea, that uses coupons, thousands of coupons on a billboard. As passers by greedily grab the coupons, they change the posters image. Instead of dry flaky skin she now looks perfect. I like it. Simple, effective, I and I bet it moved product too.

Ad agency smoyz explains: "We placed a sign, with a bell in the middle of busy street.
...The sign instructed people to take a pic of their shoes, upload it to Instagram, hashtag #ALDO and add their shoe size…"

..and then what happens? They get surprise shoes delivered! What a score for any shoe-loving lady. I have a bit of beef with this idea though, first off we really don't need to flood instagram with any more images of shoes, dear god there's plenty already. Make it stop! Second, what if the ladies are wearing tattered old rubbish shoes? That'll show up on Instagram branded as Aldo shoes. Hmmm.

How do you announce that with the TGV you can travel non-stop from Lyon's to Brussels? Why not invite the people of Lyon, one person at a time? On the morning of September 21th, Lyon woke up to find a 3 meter high cube in Place de la République. The cubes had little face-sized holes in them. Underneath the simple hole the message read "Take a look at Brussels". Many curious person had to poke their head in it.

During two days, hundreds of inhabitants of Lyon got caught up by their curiosity, and to their surprise, found themselves thrown into Brussels. Yes! The inhabitants of Lyon were received live from Mont des Arts by the mayor of Brussels, his official band and the people from Brussels, faithful with the reputation of Belgian hospitality. Tres bizarre!

To show off the sleek Ikea range of furniture, and how you can organize your life better with a decent set of shelves, drawers and wall-mounted frames, Laboratory Ideas made an app that would organize your desktop. Once you have it, click "organize" and all those files carelessly strewn about your desktop will magically sort themselves into fancy bookshelves and filing cabinets.

This won a Bronze for interactive in the Clio awards 2012