Like any place on earth, Nederlanders die Engels spreken dus een Nederlands accent, but unlike the Swedish one which I can't stand I think the Dutch-English accent is kinda cute. Especially when they say "of" instead of "or" because their synapses just can't handle or being anything but of. So here we're greeted by a Dutch man named Pim de Koel. Yes, De Koel. Pronounced just like cool. According to advertising legend he was born on Queensday, which is one helluva party, and now he's enticing us all to visit Holland. Yes, Holland, not the Netherlands.

The art of catching a cab is about to get a 21^st century makeover, courtesy of a new app from the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission. To welcome this new age of transportation, Flatiron-based production studio Click 3X has donated its considerable resources to create “Variations on a Hail” a new spot developed by Cooke&Co CD/Copywriter Marty Cooke, executed and financed entirely through Click 3X, and shot by Click 3X directors Josh Ruben & Vince Peone.

This is a direct to client spot, meaning there's no ad agency involved. It serves up the reason one needs a basketball church like Hoopdome when one lives in an urban cold city. Because we need games.

Titus Welliver greets us in an alley, where there's a desk, a bottle and a phones that rings....

He is introducing Gentleman Jack's "The Order of Gentlemen." What is that? What is the order?. All I know is that it does not have a seat at the table of Jägermeister club, because you've grown out of that state now, sir.

Drink responsibly, that's an order.

Oh yeay, another manifesto ad. Life life to the fullest. Break hearts. Have yours broken. Seek discomfort. See sunsets. See sunrises (when you sneak out of that dudes bead...). See massive raves. Dance with colors in Goa. See the world. Be scared. Be brave. Be riding in a taxi across a bridge. Be watching manifesto ads thinking "yeah man, I want to do that". Will you have lived an extraordinary life? Will you have lived mas fina? Live Mas Fina. Hey Corona, meet Taco Bell and their "Live Mas". It's a match made in heaven, bad mexican fast food and terrible beer.

Valentines day stunt. Embedded roses act as stubble. Parisians could hand out stubble roses to their significant others. At the end there was a clean face. Fun idea. I could have done without the overreactions from the "man on the street,' however.

There was some print to go with it, too.

If you're this rich why wouldn't you fake an alien invasion just to take a cell phone photo of your scared friend?
Why indeed.

A horse is born. And it then becomes a foal. And then it learns and grows and one day becomes the Budweiser Clydesdale, all thanks to the help of a human caretaker in Missouri. The spot was shot initially at the Clydesdale breeding facility. And we watch as the little foal grows up to fulfill its duty of being a majestic representation of beer.

Production house Big Star created this teaser promo for the return of HBO's "Game Of Thrones," featuring the raven of Westeros flying around the real world.

Nice revisit of the National's "Rains of Castomere," (which was heard in one of last season's episodes) too.

Frieze Films and Rob Malpage direct this spot for power company Eskom for Saatchi and Saatchi Johannesburg.

The circumstances surrounding the shoot were a bit tricky. Rob wanted to shoot Telkom’s National Control Room, because power grids are awesome, doncha know. But the place has severely restricted access. So Rob recreated it thanks to the magic of art direction and CGI.

The message is pretty much what you'd expect from a power company:

Gillette creates a documentary in which stubble bearded guys find themselves in a "Kissing recession," and then asks "Are we killing the kiss?"

Dunno. But I have some other questions.

Are we killing the kiss? Or are we in a kissing recession? Which is it?

If we are in a kissing recession isn't it more accurate to say we're fast approaching a fiscal kissing cliff but still have time to avoid it?

It takes people to make knives work.

Really nice branded content for Wusthof knives, starring not-a-celebrity-chef Richie Nakano. The knives take a back seat to the storytelling here, which is one in a series of three.

For the rest of the story, go here.

Some people won't sacrifice style for anything, like this girl-model trotting down the street in heels that would be impossible to navigate a real snowy sidewalk with. It all looks great, of course, and so does the new Lexus which can handle all weather terrains while looking good. I bet it has a better grip on the road than those heels do.

Drag-Queen Lady Gaga is on an African concrete jungle Safari, seeing the wild life such as shop keepers, black panthers, hyenas and car jackers when she passes the South African band that rocketh the hardest. Die Antwood bringeth with the war-paint and illustrated dance-gears we've seen previously in "Evil Boy" and "I fink u freeky" (Their signature style was lacking from Babys on fire) Then we pause for a moment to watch the drag-queen Gaga give birth to a prawn star. Yes.

Nothing wrong with the execution of the new Dell ads from Young & Rubicam, in fact it looks quite good. It's just that it reminds me of the AT&T you will (at&t 2, at&t 3) so much because this has in fact been the default way of explaining high-tech computery doo-dah magic for almost twenty years. This is your standard corporate ID spot. Dell does it, IBM does it, even dead telco's do it.

Made of more.

This is the new tagline for our black and white friend. The one we wait for. The one we race for. The one we dream of. The one we surf on.

It is made of more.

Indeed, it is. I'm not sure this campaign idea is, though.

In order to introduce the new Hyundai Santa Fe, Fitzroy Amsterdam developed an edgy campaign where the new design – the so called Storm Edge design – is placed centrally. With this new design Hyundai pushes the boundaries within their communication. This is perfectly in line with their pay-off slogan: “New thinking. New possibilities.” The sensual campaign can be admired on the internet as well as television.

Derrick Rose is all in.

Published March 2012

So, this is a new Levi's commercial. it's evolved the campaign to be less about America per se and, well...did I mention the VO is a poem? It is! And here is Kidsleepy's commentary as a poem in response.