This is an ad for Post-It Notes

Striking advertisment for Post-It Notes by Grey.

Snickers ad featuring Joe Pesci; MAXX Energy ad featuring a frozen lake

Snickers "Party" ad by BBDO featuring Joe Pesci and Don Rickles.




"Icy Dream" by JWT for MAXX Energy Shooter.

*Buy Snickers at Amazon.

Advertisement for Sarif Industries' body enhancements

Clever ad for Sarif Industries and its body enhancements. It's a promotion for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Via.

*Previously: Deus Ex action figures; Deus Ex viral site.

What is Envoy?

As the (rather disturbing) video explains, Envoy is supposedly a new service that takes over the Facebook profile of a dead loved one - - the program analyzes the Facebook user's history and then provides a steady stream of updates and chats so you can pretend your loved one is still around. "Using the Facebook API, we can take the dead's profile, and project it into environments outside of Facebook."

Presumably it's an advertisement for a new movie? Via.

Vader-esque samurai armor

Samurai-style Vader, and V with a sombrero - - ads by Leo Burnett. Via.

*Buy samurai helmets at eBay.

Free Twilight-themed inhaler if you live near a coal plant

From the Coal Cares website:

Why Free Inhalers? Because COAL CARES.

Coal Cares™ is a brand-new initiative from Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company, to reach out to American youngsters with asthma and to help them keep their heads high in the face of those who would treat them with less than full dignity. For kids who have no choice but to use an inhaler, Coal Cares™ lets them inhale with pride.

Puff-Puff™ inhalers are available free to any family living within 200 miles of a coal plant, and each inhaler comes with a $10 coupon towards the cost of the asthma medication itself.

There's printable activity pages for kids, too.

(It's a hoax by the Yes Men.) Via.

Nissan shared banner ads with its customers

Clever ad campaign by TBWA\RAAD for the Nissan Micra. To emphasize the car's small size, Nissan posted banner ads with lots of space left over for customers to use to try to sell their own cars. In return for posting the user's ad, Nissan placed a Tweet about the Micra in the user's Twitter stream.

Sofa-shaped microwaveable popcorn bag

Sofa-shaped microwaveable popcorn bag by Ogilvy to promote (Brazilian department store) Magazine Luiza's sofa week event. Via.

*Buy vintage advertising at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey gives his baseball bats geeky names, including Orcrist from The Hobbit and "hrunting" based on Beowulf.

2. I didn't read the article for fear of spoiling the headline:

'Mad hatters' gang of middle-aged women blamed for Detroit crime spree

Police in Detroit are hunting a gang of middle-aged women, nicknamed the "Mad Hatters", who they blame for a string of robberies, purse snatching and fraud.

Via.

3. My local theater doesn't show pre-movie commercials anymore, but the theaters that do are having trouble filling the slots:

Part of the reason for the shortfall, according to the firm's CEO, is lack of advertising from Japanese auto and electronics makers who are suffering following March's earthquake and tsunami, as well as the National Guard, which no longer needs to advertise as much because high unemployment numbers push so many candidates its way.

Link roundup

1. "In honor of the new crime thriller video game L.A. Noire coming to Playstation®3 and Xbox360® on May 17, 2011, the Los Angeles Times and Rockstar Games present this special archive edition Crime Map detailing just a few of the fascinating and frightening crimes that made 1947 such a landmark year for LAPD detectives." Via.

2. From a longer article about design school, advice I wish I had when I was still in school:

Ask anybody that went to school what they thought of it, and you will get the same response. “It was ok, not great. But this one teacher changed made it all worth while.” It’s exactly that one or two teachers that you connect with that make the school experience “worth it”. When you find your mentor, go out of your way to take more classes with them. Ask them for guidance and have them critique your work HARD. Their advice will be more than worth the tuition.

3. Plastic Army Men with PTSD and various injuries. (Some might find these offensive.) Via these sites.

*Previously: Killzone Army Men.

Link roundup

1. The owner of a Porsche saved it from a flood by parking it on an anchored inflatable raft.

2. What a terrific sponsored post at Eater - - a secret dining society sponsored by Patron. These types of ads make so much more sense than banner ads, yet I see them done properly so rarely.

3. Since the NFL has locked out players, it's up to the players to organize their own offseason workouts. Drew Brees took it one step further and is paying for many expenses, including insurance and lodging for younger players.

Clever ad for an animation festival in Romania

Clever ad by Ogilvy for the Animest animation festival in Romania.

*Buy Magic Books & Paper Toys: Flip Books, E-Z Pop-Ups & Other Paper Playthings to Amaze & Delight at Amazon.

Sony's Project Shiphunt

At Sony's Project Shiphunt, you can search the world for sunken ships.

*Buy Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea: The History and Discovery of the World's Richest Shipwreck at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. From Fast Company's article about the efforts to market carrots like junk food:

The company has been around for nearly a century now, but it boomed in the 1990s, with a breakthrough product. A local grower named Mike Yurosek had become frustrated with all the waste in the carrot business. Supermarkets expected carrots to be a particular size, shape, and color. Anything else had to be sold for juice or processing or animal feed, or just thrown away. Yurosek wondered what would happen if he peeled the skin off the gnarly carrots, cut them into pieces, and sold them in bags. He made up a few test batches to show his buyers. One batch, cut into 1-inch bites and peeled round, he called "bunny balls." Another batch, peeled and cut 2 inches long, looked like little baby carrots.

Bunny balls never made it. But baby carrots were a hit. They transformed the whole industry. Soon, the big growers in Bakersfield were planting fields with baby carrots in mind, sowing three times more seeds per acre, so the carrots, packed densely together, would grow long and skinny, for the maximum number of 2-inch cuts. Yields and profits climbed. The really big deal, the thing nobody expected, was that baby carrots seemed to make Americans eat more carrots. In the decade after they were introduced, carrot consumption in the United States doubled.

Then a couple of years ago, after a decade of steady growth, Bolthouse's carrot sales went flat. Sales of baby carrots, the company's cash carrot, actually fell, sharply, and stayed down. Nobody knew why. This was a big problem.

...

Dunn put together a series of focus groups and surveys and discovered something interesting. People said they were eating as many carrots as they always had. But the numbers clearly showed they were buying fewer. What people meant, it turned out, was they were as likely as ever to keep carrots in the fridge. When the recession hit, though, they became more likely to buy regular carrots, instead of baby carrots, to save money. But people used to eating baby carrots weren't taking the time to wash and cut the regular ones. And unlike baby carrots, which dry out pretty quickly once a bag is opened, regular carrots keep a long time. So people were buying regular carrots and then not eating them, and not buying more until the carrots they had were finally gone or spoiled.

2. And from an article in the same issue about the business of water:

The water bill at IBM Burlington -- just to get 3.2 million gallons a day into the plant -- is $100,000 a month. The water staff turns plain municipal water into a portfolio of products, depending on whether someone is mixing high-tech chemicals or running air-conditioning chillers. IBM's utility plant creates nine custom varieties of water. Each brand of water costs 4, 5, or 10 times more than the cost of the raw water itself.

3. FYI, if you want to get a hold of the Marvel Universe Cable with baby action figure (possibly the best action figure ever), check out the new Marvel Universe case available at Entertainment Earth. Instead of the last mix, which included several doubles (including two Gladiators), this new set has no doubles, and includes a Thanos.

And speaking of EE, buy 4 Funko items, get a 5th free (Funko makes very cute plush toys you've probably seen all around the net).

UPDATE: You can find the Cable for $25, including shipping, at Amazon.

Two (severed) thumbs up for Byron Eggenschwiler's Calgary Film Festival posters

Illustrations by Byron Eggenschwiler for the Calgary Under Ground Film Festival.

*Buy ninja posters at eBay.

DC created a super hero costume tailor shop in the real world

As the video explains, Mr. Lee's Tailor shop was opened in Madrid to create costumes for super heroes and villains. It was a promotion dreamed up by Leo Burnett to advertise DC Universe Online.

*Buy DC Direct action figures at eBay.

Octopus ad becomes visible only when it rains

Official description:

FRESH GREEN ADS has developed a RAINCAMPAIGN for SEA LIFE Scheveningen. Every time it rains the octopus of SEA LIFE Scheveningen appears on the streets and out of public drains and man-hole covers with its tentacles holding the text: "SEA LIFE laat je niet meer los" (SEA LIFE never lets you go). When the streets dry up the RAINCAMPAIGN disappears again.

In a surprising way the people in the streets are drawn to the wonderful world of SEA LIFE Scheveningen when it rains. When the streets dry up the octopus disappears again. These striking and environmentally friendly messages remain visible up to eight weeks.

Frozen elevator

LP 360 wrapped an elevator with stickers to make it appear frozen to promote Link Trade. Via.

*Previously:
-Elevator wants you to push harder.
-Lobster elevator.
-Williamsburg doesn't need a space elevator.

Old Spice Jungle Wilderness commercial

Take a tour through an extremely dangerous jungle in the Jungle Wilderness ad for Old Spice:

Wieden + Kennedy Portland’s new Old Spice campaign, ‘Danger Zone’, treks determinedly into the action-adventure genre with ‘Jungle’. The spot features a new Old Spice guy who will stop at nothing to meet his lovely lady. Shot on location in Auckland, NZ, Biscuit’s Tim Godsall directed and, in another winning collaboration with W+K on Old Spice, The Mill LA produced VFX.

“The big challenge was getting all that action into one spot,” says Robert Sethi, our VFX Supervisor/Lead 3D Artist on ‘Jungle’. The shoot included over a week of prep during which rehearsals meticulously choreographed encounters with a crocodile, jungle snakes, piranhas and a speeding truck . . . .

‘Jungle’s’ last scene features our hero emerging from a lake of flesh-eating piranhas, but nonetheless as cool and debonair as ever. Giles Cheetham, our Lead 2D Artist, explains he was filmed in his chic white suit with blue leggings against blue screen; they were removed then a CG skeleton was matched to his legs.

Via.

That's right, even more Portal 2 coverage

Portal/Mortal Kombat mashup features fatalities that utilize the Portal gun. (these are pretty violent.)



P-Body makes an appearance in the single player campaign.



Youtube user:

On test chamber 16 I found if you destroy the turret in the vent, it will explode and you can enter. Through the grates at the bottom you'll find 4 sentry guns who will play a little song for you =).

How to get the achievement "Break the Rules" in Portal 2. (A sad little moment with a companion cube.)



Via Kotaku, the extras menu features an interactive trailer for Super 8 - - you walk through the trailer as if it was a Portal level.