Daily
Boy Finds Own Real-Life E.T.
To be half as brilliant as the people at The Onion…
Video Games, Ruined
For anyone who grew up with vids back in the day, you know they’re supposed to rot your brain with senseless killing and violence. How have we gone so wrong since the days of Contra?
A family shouldn’t have to wait until Sunday to worship the Lord. Now you can go to church every day without leaving your home. Participate in more than 24 unique and exhilarating Ceremonies. Be sure to try them all. The more you play, the more Grace points you collect. Then trade in your Grace points to unlock the Holy Mysteries. Only from Prayer Works Interactive. Help bring your family closer. To Heaven. Learn more at MassWePray.com.
UPDATE: Not surprisingly, the video and accompanying site are a viral campaign for the new game Dante’s Inferno – Go To Hell. Read more about it here.
Thanks, Joe
Inside Your Search
Check out this rad interactive ad/microsite from Weetabix Foods showing how Google delivers its speedy search results – from a POV inside their search engine.
The Human Hamster Hotel
A hotel in France gives guests the chance to live like a hamster – where you can eat grain, run in a giant wheel and sleep on hay. The so-called Hamster Villa is located in the town of Nantes and is run by a company which rents out unusual and bizarre places. The rate is 99 euros a night, but is soon to go up as today’s hamsters need wi-fi and a giant tv screen, according to the owners.
Via The Presurfer
Backyard Vortex
Designed by Berkeley-based architect Thom Faulders for the backyard of Jeff Dauber, a senior executive at Apple. More on the story here.
Thanks, Brad
The Epic Pass: You're Gonna Love It
After seeing the huge effort Vail Resorts is putting behind skier Lindsey Vonn and her quest for Olympic Gold in Vancouver, the crew at Freeskier Magazine came up with the idea to promote another freeski athlete sponsored by Vail Resorts – Colby James West. He stars in this piece they developed in partnership with Mike Thomas, sporting a damn fine ‘stache and haircut, demonstrating his comedic chops and promoting the Epic Pass. Enjoy.
EPIC PASS Infomercial from Mike Thomas on Vimeo.
Epic Outtakes from Mike Thomas on Vimeo.
The Man Who Designed America
Arguably the most influential industrial designer of the 20th century, French-born Raymond Loewy (1893 – 1986) fashioned or utterly re-imagined a dizzying array of products and brands during a career spanning seven decades. Writer, illustrator, and co-founder of the Web’s best blog, BoingBoing, Mark Frauenfelder has been fascinated by Loewy’s work for years. In this gallery, Mark celebrates his favorite Loewy projects, and muses on the man’s enduring appeal.
Thanks, Brad
Orbit Gum: Clean It Up
Digging this, just for its sheer strangeness. Illustrator: Goons. Music: Camera Obsura. Agency: Evolution Bureau, San Francisco.
Denver-Based Charity Asks for Your Help in Supporting World Toilet Day
World Toilet Day is today, Thursday, November 19, and Water For People wants to get people talking about toilets—a topic not often discussed in everyday conversation. More than 6,000 people die every day, including 4,000 children, from diseases caused by poor sanitation and unsafe water. We’re making strides in improving water, but unsafe or a complete lack of toilets is still not capturing enough of the world’s attention to speed support to the communities that need help the most.
Send an e-card to celebrate World Toilet Day today.
McCain: Good Unlimited
Coca-Cola Happiness Factory-ish. We like.
Ikea: Facebook Showroom
With a tiny budget, Forsman & Bodenfors have developed a very smart Facebook campaign for Ikea. To the Facebook profile of store manager, Gordon Gustavsson, they uploaded pictures of the Ikea showroom. The first person to tag each picture with their name, won the item – in turn, growing Ikea’s base of Facebook fans and spreading pictures of Ikea goods all across the internet through people’s Facebook profiles. Oh yeah.
TDA Adds New Position, Director of Strategy & Development
TDA Advertising & Design, Boulder has hired Jim Moscou, 41, as director of strategy and development. Responsibilities for the newly created, agency-wide position are both client-facing (planning) and internal (agency development). Most recently, Moscou was senior cog at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Boulder, on the Microsoft and Alliance for Climate Protection (Al Gore) accounts.
Moscou states, “Throughout my career, all my work has been about communicating culture—to track, digest and bring to people insights on trends that really matter and are steeped in truth. TDA understands the value of that research, and the benefit and confidence it will bring clients and their products when jumping into today’s cultural stream.”
TDA creative director Jonathan Schoenberg adds, “Jim’s coming on board at a good time. Over the last year, our clients have become larger, with larger strategic needs. We’ve done pretty well up to now with good common sense. Jim’s going to buttress that with some serious research chops.”
Mountain Dew Taps Threadless for Design Contest
Denver agency Motive seems to have a crush on the art community at large, because their last two executions for Mountain Dew have put it front and center. This time, they’ve helped the brand open up a contest on Threadless to see who can submit the best retro-inspired design for a tee. Who knows…maybe if enough local designers submit something, they’ll throw another party with free booze.
Save Monolith
MONOLITH Fans,
We are very saddened by the nature of this announcement but wanted to bring it to you first. We feel like we have always been very fan-centric, honest and open with you therefore it’s important to us to communicate the severity of our current situation. We have tirelessly promoted and produced the Monolith Festival for 3 years now. Over the course of those three years we have witnessed some amazing performances, met a bunch of great friends and produced a very special event that filled our voracious appetite to deliver the most amazing new artists in the world. Many of you who know us know that we do this out of sheer pleasure, undesirable love of music and a vehicle to tout our admiration for hardworking musicians.
With that said, the future of the festival is very grim. A tough economic year and an opening day of chilling rain combined to put a serious dent in our humble operation. We have continued to pursue any and all options that would allow us to recover from this year and head into 2010 with full steam. At this point in time, we have been unable to secure any options. We are communicating this message to you – the fans, the media and the artists who have supported time and time again for good reason. We hope that somewhere, in our vast network of music lovers, that there may be someone with the means to pull us up by our boot straps and give us chance to continue building this amazing event.
If you have any input or know of someone who may be interested in investing in/purchasing our small but mighty event, we would love to speak with them. We have a number of options available for interested parties/individuals. For more information please contact jb@monolithfestival.com. Again, this is our last resort and we have explored just about every option that is available to us. To the folks who we still hold financial obligations to, we whole-heartedly appreciate your patience and willingness to work through this tough time with us.
A very special thanks to the fans who have bought tickets, told your friends, blogged and shouted from the mountaintops about their admiration and love for Monolith. We encourage you to continue this as it can only help our cause. We would also like to thank our loyal, generous sponsors who have been there for us year after year. Specific thanks and credit goes to Esurance who saw our vision for this event and remains the sole reason why this event was even possible.
Best Regards, MONOLITH Team
Contact us at jb@monolithfestival.com
Logo Contest Making a Stink in the Springs
The largest air show in the state, the Colorado Balloon Classic, is looking for a new logo, and, big surprise, doesn’t want to pay for it. So they’re opening it up to the masses.
Here’s what you win:
The Logo Contest Winner will receive a Professional Logo Prize Package which includes:
a. $200.00 Gift Certificate for Colorado Balloon Classic apparel or merchandise.
b. An acknowledgment and personal photo in the 2010 Official Souvenir Program.
c. Press Release announcing the winner of the 2010 Logo Contest.
d. Two (2) VIP Parking Passes to the 2010 event.
Worse of all, it’s city-funded. What a pathetic state of disrespect our industry is encountering right now.
New Winter Park Website from Cactus
As Winter Park opened for its 70th season yesterday (unreal), Denver ad agency Cactus launched a new site for the resort. It’s your standard resort-destination affair to be accompanied by print and online ads.
Austin Howe: Designers Don't Read
“Designer’s Don’t Read“? Are we gonna take that kind of smack talk? We’ll be reading the first couple lines on your obituary if you keep it up, tough guy.
(No really though, great new book. Go pick it up or read sample chapters here.)
The Egotist Interviews: Leif Steiner of Moxie Sozo >>
Leif Steiner has hitchhiked the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, traveled in the Sahara with the Bedouin, and spent time in a Mexican jail. He has partied in Rio with a Brazilian supermodel and sat at the desk of the Spanish president. In 2007, the State of Louisiana declared August 29th to be ‘Leif Steiner Day’ in recognition of Moxie Sozo’s contributions to the region after Hurricane Katrina.
More importantly to us here: Leif understands design, advertising and the intricacies of navigating a brand across the competitive landscape. Leif oversees all of the creative that leaves the offices of Moxie Sozo, and is the primary reason that many of the firm’s clients refuse to work with any other agency.
Is Leif Steiner Dos Equis’ World’s Most Interesting Man come to life? He may well be.
P.S. Leif has agreed to help us take advantage of this two-way forum we have here by monitoring comments under the interview post and responding to any additional questions you’d like to ask that he finds interesting. So ask away. He’s out out town for a week starting Friday, but will add his thoughts when he’s able.
3 days ago / / Link
Assignment #2 From Boulder's Victors & Spoils
Moving past their own logo development, the new-age crowdsourcing agency, Victors & Spoils, Boulder, has announced a new contest – to redesign the Dish Network installation fleet. Go get ‘em, whoever wants to go get ‘em. The submissions so far won’t be hard to beat.
I Love Local Commercials Will Make a Free Commercial for Your Favorite Matress Shop (or Similar)
Rhett & Link, the guys behind some genuinely great local advertising, are offering people the chance to nominate a business in their own city to have a free commercial shot for said enterprise. Who would you pick locally for the opportunity?
Check out ILoveLocalCommercials.com to nominate.
Thanks, Jordan
Ivar's Undersea Billboards Hoax
A fantastic piece of viral marketing has revealed itself from under the Puget Sound off of Seattle this week. It seems Ivar’s Seafood Restaurant in Seattle crafted a story that its founder anchored billboards advertising the restaurant’s clam chowder beneath the ocean back in the mid-1950s – in anticipation of people one day traveling by submarine and seeing them. The restaurant and its ad agency, Heckler Associates, Seattle, then planted the story with the news that they were going to haul these billboards up for everyone to see. (Billboards they had planted weeks earlier in the Puget Sound.)
An ad campaign ran alongside the news stories touting that Ivar’s would roll back its chowder pricing to 1950s rates to celebrate the occasion and underwater discovery. They even had Paul Dorpat, a respected Seattle historian and first vice president of HistoryLink.org, giving legitimacy to the fake billboards even though he knew otherwise.
In September, when the campaign broke, sales of clam chowder more than quadrupled when compared to September 2008 – from 19,000 cups to 83,000 cups.
Damn, that’s genius. Welcome to advertising in 2010.
Quietglover posted these great videos that document the full story.
Thanks, Brad